On the eve of the country’s 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich condemn U.S. representatives’ plans in the 2027 NDAA to deepen U.S. strategic integration with Israel.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressing a joint session of U.S. Congress on July 24, 2024. (C-Span screen shot)
By Dennis Kucinich and Elizabeth Kucinich
Substack
The United States Congress, on the very eve of the 250th anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, is preparing to formally diminish American independence and sovereignty through a proposed merger and long-term integration of executive functions throughout the government, coordinated by the Department of Defense.
Treacherous provisions in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) mandate that the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Commerce Department and the heads of other relevant federal departments and agencies cooperate with their Israeli counterparts for the purpose of consolidating U.S. and Israeli military activities in order to align efforts and avoid duplication.
The greatest threat to American sovereignty rarely arrives wearing the uniform of a foreign army. It often arrives through the complacency, expediency, or poor judgment of elected officials who fail to recognize the long-term consequences of the powers they surrender.
Whether motivated by political convenience, misplaced loyalty, or simple inattention, such actions can erode constitutional self-government just as surely as deliberate acts of betrayal.
No foreign nation, regardless of whether it is Israel, Britain, Canada, France or Japan, should be integrated into permanent executive, military, technological, intelligence, and research structures in a manner that diminishes American sovereignty and democratic accountability.
The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) recently identified Israel as a counterintelligence threat.
Under ordinary circumstances, such a finding would prompt heightened scrutiny, caution and congressional oversight.
Instead, Congress has continued advancing provisions in the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would deepen military, technological and strategic integration between the United States and Israel.
The legislation specifies Israel-U.S. coordination with America’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Missile Defense Agency, including the Golden Dome initiative, the United States Space Command, directed energy programs, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and other critical technologies that will shape the future distribution of power.
Of all the areas mentioned, artificial intelligence and biotechnology may have the greatest long term implications. These technologies will shape privacy, surveillance, predictive policing, digital identity systems, biosecurity, human enhancement technologies and information control.
Artificial intelligence algorithms, developed and trained by the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Autonomous Air Combat Operations, used neural networks to fly this XQ-58A Valkyrie, a combat drone, against simulated opponents at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida on Aug. 22, 2023. (U.S. Air Force/Rebecca Abordo)
The Founders could never have imagined artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, or biotechnology directed by algorithms. Yet they understood a timeless truth: power must remain accountable to the people.
The danger of our age is not merely that authority may concentrate in governments, corporations, or military institutions. It is that decisions of profound consequence may increasingly be delegated to technological systems that operate beyond the understanding and oversight of those whom the Constitution entrusts with governing.
The highly structured Israel-U.S. merger is included in the $1.5 trillion NDAA, in Section 219, formerly Section 224, in the House version and Section 1217 in the Senate version. It puts in place policies which will bind future administrations.
Democratic Fundamentals
Democracy depends on elected officials being able to alter policy. Permanent structures can make that increasingly difficult.
Democracies function because citizens can change policy through elections. When military, intelligence, and technological institutions become permanently integrated across governments and bureaucracies, decision-making can drift beyond the reach of voters.
The issue is not cooperation with perceived allies. The issue is whether future Americans retain the practical ability to change course through democratic means.
The democratic question, regardless of the technology involved, is simple: Who governs these technologies, and for what purpose?
Will decisions remain accountable to elected representatives and the American people, or will authority increasingly reside within security agencies, military institutions, and specialized technical bureaucracies beyond meaningful democratic oversight?
The U.S.-Israel military-executive merger provisions in the NDAA advance military influence across civilian government and create precisely the conditions the Constitution was designed to prevent.
The U.S. Declaration of Independence condemned King George III for having rendered the military independent of and superior to the civil power and for having combined with others to subject America to a jurisdiction foreign to its constitution, and unacknowledged by its laws.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon on Feb. 5, 2025. (DoD/Madelyn Keech/Public Domain)
The concern is not just military and executive integration with any foreign nation. It is the gradual expansion of military institutions into civilian domains including technology, biotechnology, commerce, communications, and artificial intelligence and the effect on the Republic and its freedom.
As national security priorities become embedded throughout government, civilian decision-making becomes subordinate to military logic. Policies that should be determined through democratic debate become the province of security institutions, technical experts and permanent bureaucracies.
The Founders understood the motivations of leaders of other countries may be inconsistent with American ideals or interests. The Founders structured the government of the United States so that future administrations would not be locked into foreign alliances which became vexatious.
If cooperation evolves into integration, future administrations will have less freedom to pursue independent diplomatic, military, technological, and economic policies.
Decisions made in the name of efficiency today may limit the choices available to Americans tomorrow.
Congress is constitutionally responsible for oversight of the executive branch.
U.S. House of Representatives building and the East Portico of the U.S. Capitol. (Ron Cogswell, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
A key question is whether the military and executive merger provisions in the 2027 NDAA create new arrangements that are sufficiently transparent and reviewable by Congress.
If significant military, intelligence, technological, or strategic decisions become embedded within joint frameworks, legislators may find themselves attempting to oversee systems that have acquired their own institutional momentum.
Ironclad collaborative provisions uniting Israel and the United States in the 2027 NDAA are being advanced on the basis of current political relationships and short-term strategic considerations rather than a careful assessment of their long -term institutional consequences.
Congress has devoted remarkably little attention to how such an arrangement could affect American sovereignty, constitutional accountability, civilian control of the government of the United States, and the ability of future generations to alter policy through democratic means.
The question before Congress is not whether Israel is a friend today. The question is whether the permanent integration of military, technological, intelligence, research, and governmental functions with any foreign nation serves the long-term interests of the United States.
The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. constitutional system has been entrusted to the public’s care. Aliances between nations may change. Governments change. Political leaders come and go, friendships change.
Yet the structures established by law can endure for generations.
The Constitution was designed to preserve the sovereignty of the American Republic through democratic accountability, separation of powers, and civilian control of government.
Any arrangement that permanently embeds foreign influence within executive, military, intelligence, technological, or research institutions will not stand once it receives the highest degree of constitutional scrutiny.
Congress has already struggled to reclaim its constitutionally based war powers. The military establishment has steadily accumulated influence across multiple domains of public policy.
These provisions move further in that direction by embedding foreign military and security priorities. throughout the machinery of government.
Members of Congress swear an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. That oath is a sacred trust and does not abide treachery. Any measure that diminishes American sovereignty, weakens constitutional self-government, or places the powers of this republic in alignment with a foreign authority violates both the spirit of that oath and the duty owed to every American citizen.
As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its Independence this Saturday, Congress is poised to bind future generations through strategic commitments made to a foreign power today.
These provisions reflect a profound failure of constitutional judgment. They elevate short term political and military considerations above the enduring duty to preserve the sovereignty, independence, and freedom of action of the United States.
The Founders warned repeatedly against arrangements that would entangle future generations in obligations they neither chose nor approved. Yet Congress now stands on the threshold of embracing precisely such an arrangement, limiting the freedom of future American leaders to chart an independent course in diplomacy, technology, security, and national defense.
Whether driven by political expediency, misplaced loyalties, institutional inertia, or a failure to grasp the long-term consequences of their actions, the result is the same: a diminished capacity for self-government and a dangerous departure from the constitutional principles that have safeguarded American independence for two and a half centuries.
On the eve of America 250th year, every citizen must decide whether independence is merely a memory to celebrate or a responsibility to defend.
Elizabeth Kucinich is a leader in human and ecological security with expertise in international relations, war and peace, monetary policy reform, land, food, health and resilience.
This article is from the authors’ Substack and reprinted with permission.
Views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
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