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.
Please Donate to the
Spring Fund Drive!
Permanent war. AI has already registered your sons for the draft by getting their info from various agencies, over 75% of which are under the same ai “umbrella”. The decision whether or not to abide by the law and register for the draft has now been taken out of your hands. As will be the decision to fight a war.
They no longer will have to do a song and dance to go to war. And kids will be forced to fight these wars.
There will no going to Canada. Look it up. Our own gov spends all their time on these bills, and doing everything for some other country. So who represents us? Maybe we can pay somebody…
One thing is certain we soon will learn what the near future has in store for us.
I’m not particularly optimistic about the near future. Seems we all are headed for a rather dangerous vexing period of challenges by government to the public large. Presented to 340.ooo,ooo million people at least half of whom are armed. U.S. Government authority will be challenged not only by trump but by those loathe to him. The culmination of what he is working for. Destruction of the country. Something I’m sure a great many are adamantly opposed to.
To Carolyn Zaremba working hard point to total doom and no hope in the near future.
While I do agree both parties are miserable performers in the ruse called Presidential elections, I do believe as JFK stated problems made by man, humans, can be solved by men, humans.
At 77 I refuse to give in to greed heads or authoritarians, Zionist in general for that matter. I doubt I’m alone here. This is a big country close to the brink of rebellion.
Americans, especially the young are not happy campers and who among us can blame them? Not a one of them ever were asked if they desired to be born into this mess. ~ 276.8 million Americans are between the ages of 18 & over including 65.8 million of the that number who are older than 65. Like it or not , it makes no difference those of us over the age of 50 have become insignificant with respect to Presidential elections.
For all the time I spend reading comments here I find a very few willing to condemn, Biden, the democrats or Trump and republicans for supporting Israel’s genocide both materially and by policy.
To this behavior I declare never again. If it does happen it will likely happen to remove Americans from the landscape of America. This will be a bloody mess if the fascist Zionists turn guns on the masses.
Regardless of party lines everyone down to the last person may well have a serious decision to make. I recommend voting while you still have a choice.
Time has come to pick a side, unite, resist, Long live the SON’S OF LIBERTY, Defiance till death!
You see I don’t figure I have any reason to give up on life because of anyone.
Get ready for the fight f your life or go jump out a window, what the hell ever, but either lead or follow and please stay out of the way!
Multi National Corparasites have been calling the shots since the early fifties.
And who are the major shareholders of those corporations?
No prizes for guessing.
Johnny I concur. The major shareholders are in general are those with the most money. Something very problematic in the grand scheme of having supposed fair and ‘free’ elections.
John Roberts paved the way for the super rich oligarchs to dominate the political world with his 2010 reversal of an earlier courts ruling in the case of Citizens United vs F.E.C.. In the process he invented a new totally inappropriate definition of the word ‘money’!
You know something awful is happening when neither political party finds any issues when such total travesty of justice occurs. Roberts is a political hack, fraud and should be jailed for failing to up hold the U.S. Constitution and his Oath of Office.
All the chants of USA, USA, USA at the World Cup and other events make US Americans look as dumb as rocks. What do they have to be so loudly proud of? We are a failed state taken over by fascist Zionists who torture, rape and murdered anyone who doesn’t bow down to their greater Israel policies. What a rude awakening these “patriotic” Americans are in for. As for the duopoly politicians, they deserve life in prison for their complicity in their treasonous betrayal.
Israel may have lost the war to take over Iran but they have won the war to take over the USA.
Remember the Asian guide to war. First win then start the battle. Israel took over the USA a long time ago. Some are too stupid to see it.
John you point out the loss of U.S. sovereignty given away by JJ Angleton and his Zionist friends.
Now trump is working for state standing per his NDAA allowing for merger with Israel.
Quitter’s never prosper. I happen to know damned well what happened and I have a very good idea of what is about to happen. Human nature blesses us with the killer instinct for a reason. Self preservation runs strong and deep in the larger majority of us.
You appear to have little to offer in the character quality of leadership. My friendly advice is not to follow to closely or remain undecided. Lead or follow or sit this one out.
Your generalization about those who are stupid refer to whom. Anyone not a magat, I’m curious.
Our country is over. I mean, truly over. The backwardness and retreat into dictatorship has grown like mold on the surface of an orange left in the bowl for too long. And the bowing down to Israel is the final oozing corruption that has resulted. The U.S. government has been taken over by ignorant, hate-filled yahoos, whose hobby is violence and whose mantra is capitalist dogma. Everything about it disgusts me now. Just today I read about a school in the state of Kentucky that enacted the shooting of immigrants–in a schoolroom, no less–with glee on their stupid faces and murder in their hearts for anything outside their limited life experience. It made me sick. Honestly, if you are not sickened by what the United States has become, you are either in a coma or one of the stupid.
This is naked treason against the Constitution of the United States and whoever votes for this should be put on trial for exactly that. Our Constitution is very clear on how treasonous individuals are to be handled.
You’re correct. But the government has trashed the Constitution over and over again.
And we are doing this with a country that shuns what we stand for in being a pluralistic society, plus it has no qualms about committing genocide.
Which is it? “a profound failure of constitutional judgment” or a foreign alliance which may “became vexatious.”
Inviting literal Nazis to collaborate with the U.S. government is a catastrophe of the highest order — not a vexatious hangnail.
When will the word TREASON be used?
Treason means disloyalty or treachery to one’s country or its government.
If this provision means Israel first, and not America first, is that not treasonous?
It is treasonous. The entire government and all its agencies are treasonous. They are now just puppets of the corporate warmongers and genocidal racists.
Exactly right! I would add that the right wing, MAGA and the darling center right are all treasonous also. I used to think that they were just dumber than a box of rocks, but they have shown that they are much worse.
Let’s be real. It’s not “treasonous”—it’s just completely reasonless.
Reasonless is what they do best.
Sure is. There is nothing new with Trump. Magats voted for treason, the only thing trump is focused on.
I use the word several times a day describing Trump’s Cult, Experts Operators of Criminal Enterprises Inc.!
Currently 17.6 million veterans of foreign wars alive in the U.S. and we stick together. Long live the Son’s of Liberty.
These guys who make these decisions are living in conceptual time, not the present where the means determine the ends…they can’t see they are diving into the abyss with Israel. Conscious but blind to lived results. Who, looking at Trump or Netanyahu could mistake them as friends, or friendly? Only Congress, unfortunately!
Authoritarianism marches on. It’s already a “crime” to protest against the activities of the Zionist State of Genocidal Actions and the ICE thugs are out of control…ya gets what ya vote for!
Unfortunately, I did not vote for any of these yahoos. I don’t vote for capitalists, full stop.
I quit voting for “mainstream” rats after the 2000 election. Neither party has provided a decent candidate for longer than that. They all bow to their masters, the wealthy, and con the rest of us into making a “choice”, where no choice exists.
How awful! Never let this happen.
Thank you for calling attention to this disturbing prospect.
“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.”
I can answer that: no it does not serve the interest of the USA as a whole, and because this is Israel and we know what it has done to the ME, what it does serve is Trump’s desire to be all powerful along with his techno-fascist buds like Thiel and Musk and others of this low IQ administration.
Exactly.
“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”
Or, selling it to the highest bidder. Capitalisms finest hour. ;-/
So, it seems clear that the Republicans are a fifth column entity in the body of America. Now, will the Democrats oppose this? Or will they prove that they are the same problem for the US public with a different face (marketing)?
Come on. The Democrats have already proven that they support this. They’re capitalist all the way. Why do people still believe that the Democrats are somehow agents of change in support of democracy? They have proven their loyalty to the Trumps and Musks and Netanyahus of the world again and again.