The US military is the IDF? Implications of integration for Aotearoa New Zealand in a forever hot war
This coming week the US congress is considering whether to pass the record-shattering US$1.15 trillion National Defence Authorisation Act. Without a doubt, there are many, many things in this law that are disturbing beyond comprehension. However, one part – Section 219. United States–Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative – has raised a distinct alarm. The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft says, under their headline, Congress quietly moves to integrate US and Israeli militaries, that
“…the House’s 2027 NDAA would all but fuse the two countries’ armed forces together…This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance.”
Democracy Now! describes that, “The provision would bring the U.S. and Israel into an unprecedented partnership covering technology sharing, the co-production of weapons systems, and bilateral research and development across multiple domains of warfare, including biotechnology, autonomous systems, AI, cyberwarfare and more.”
For people in the US seeking to end US aid for Israel’s genocide, this bill further obscures the true nature of the relationship moving it from one of aid, to one of seamless integration.
But it also raises very significant questions here in Aotearoa NZ, most pointedly that: if the US and Israel are in effect, an integrated military force, will the NZDF continue its own aggressive involvement with the US?
Last week, the NZDF released a list of the international military training it has conducted between 2024-2026. Just since the beginning of 2026 the NZDF has done training with the US no less than eight times including in:
- Thailand
- Philippines
- Australia
- Kanaky/New Caledonia
- Korea
- Auckland
- Alaska
- RIMPAC in Hawai’i (which includes Israel)
Defence documents are clear that the NZ government is seeking a close military relationship with the US, and evidence has borne that out repeatedly over the past two years. It includes the NZDF deployment to the US’s Red Sea operations against the Houthis, the government’s unwillingness to recognise the state of Palestine, the deployment of a NZDF liaison to Israel following the Gaza ceasefire and the Prime Minister’s keenness to publicly support the US war on Iran.
By training for war with nations waging genocide and aggressive wars, New Zealand is, at the very least, complicit in the US and Israel’s crimes by it failure to do anything to stop these grotesque crimes. That failure to prevent criminality is inherent in the definition of complicity.
But New Zealand is doing far more than failing to stop US and Israeli criminality. Instead, NZ is providing material enhancement to the war fighting abilities of those countries. The NZDF regularly states that ‘interoperability’ with the US is a major aim – and indeed it is the point of much of the ceaseless training that occurs.
Space launches by the US Department of War satellites from Māhia are not scrutinised by NZ beyond the ‘classified’ US national security status. In effect, New Zealand has already ceded oversight of launches to the US. Commercial launches have provided targeting data to the IOF, and the then Minister of Defence, Judith Collins, has sought plausible deniability of her knowledge of Israel’s genocide at the time.
The US and Israel intend to push forward on their ongoing global campaign of imperial war – this week in the US Congress will determine if that is in effect as a singular military force. We should be alert to this vote because the flow on effects it has for deepening Aotearoa NZ’s role as a handmaiden to US-Israeli crimes is real.
