Super Sparta: Israel’s new military dependence on America

Is Israel really moving towards military self-reliance – or is the US-Israel “special relationship” being transformed into something even more deeply integrated?

Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that Israel must become a “Super Sparta” was presented as a response to growing international isolation. The message was stark: if Israel could no longer depend upon an international order willing to arm it, finance it and defend its policies indefinitely, then it would have to become sufficiently militarised and economically self-reliant to withstand the pressure. Israel, Netanyahu suggested, would have to produce more of what it needs and reduce its vulnerability to foreign governments that might eventually impose arms restrictions or other forms of pressure.

But there is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of this vision. Israel may be capable of producing an extraordinary range of sophisticated weapons, surveillance systems, drones, missiles, cyber technologies and air-defence systems. It is, after all, one of the world’s major arms exporters. Yet the idea that Israel can simply withdraw into military autarky and continue its present scale of warfare is considerably less convincing.

The more interesting possibility is that “Super Sparta” does not mean separation from the United States at all. It may mean something almost opposite: the transformation of the old US-Israel relationship from one based primarily on military assistance into a much more deeply integrated military-industrial partnership. Israel would manufacture more, but within a technological, financial and procurement ecosystem increasingly intertwined with the American defence establishment. Dependence would not disappear. It would become institutionalised.

This distinction matters enormously.

For decades, US military assistance has helped preserve Israel’s qualitative military edge. The existing ten-year US memorandum of understanding provides $3.3 billion annually in Foreign Military Financing, alongside $500 million for cooperative missile-defence programmes. Washington has also supplied Israel with aircraft, missiles, bombs, armoured vehicles and other major systems. The latest SIPRI figures make the structural dependence even clearer. Between 2021 and 2025, the United States supplied 68 per cent of Israel’s imports of major arms, with Germany supplying most of the remainder. That is hardly the profile of a country preparing to wage an indefinitely sustained regional war in complete independence from foreign military support.

Yet Israel possesses something that makes the relationship different from a conventional client-state arrangement. Its military-industrial sector is highly developed and technologically sophisticated. Israel itself was the world’s seventh-largest exporter of major arms in 2021–25, according to SIPRI, while its exports rose substantially during this period.

Israeli companies such as Israel Aerospace Industries, Rafael and Elbit Systems have become major international defence suppliers. Israeli air-defence and missile technologies are now being marketed around the world, with Greece recently agreeing to a €3 billion air-defence programme involving Israeli systems.

This creates the apparent paradox: Israel is simultaneously a major arms exporter and a major arms importer.

There is no contradiction once the nature of contemporary warfare is understood. Producing sophisticated weapons does not mean possessing every component, raw material, engine, aircraft platform, semiconductor, guidance technology, production line or financial mechanism required to sustain a modern military. Israel can design and manufacture remarkable systems while remaining embedded in international supply chains on which those systems depend.

The F-35 is the clearest example. Israel cannot manufacture its own equivalent of the F-35 independently of the United States. Nor does its indigenous defence industry eliminate its need for American aircraft, American munitions, American components or American logistical and technological support. SIPRI records continued US transfers of F-35 combat aircraft, guided bombs and missiles during the 2021–25 period.

The same principle applies more broadly. Modern warfare is not simply about whether a state can manufacture a missile. It is about whether it can sustain the entire ecosystem required to fight a prolonged multi-front war: intelligence, satellites, electronics, precision-guidance systems, aircraft, spare parts, software, communications, logistics, maintenance, fuel, replenishment and financing. It also requires access to international markets and political relationships.

Israel’s war economy has demonstrated considerable resilience. Its sophisticated technology sector, high savings, natural-gas resources and military-industrial base have enabled it to absorb enormous wartime disruption. But even analyses describing the Israeli economy as remarkably resilient acknowledge the enormous financial cost of prolonged warfare and the central importance of US military support.

This is where the concept of “integration” becomes more significant than the language of self-reliance.

Instead of Washington simply writing a cheque for Israeli purchases, the future relationship could involve Israeli companies becoming increasingly embedded in the US defence-industrial ecosystem; joint production; shared research and development; American investment in Israeli defence manufacturing; co-production of weapons; common supply chains; technology-sharing arrangements; and Israeli systems becoming components of wider US and allied military architectures.

In other words, Israel could become less like a recipient of American military assistance and more like an integrated node within the American military-industrial complex.

That would change the political equation.

Under the old model, Israel’s dependence upon US aid theoretically gave Washington leverage. If an American administration decided that Israeli conduct had become politically or strategically intolerable, military assistance could, in principle, be conditioned or suspended. The relationship therefore contained at least the possibility of leverage.

But if Israeli and American defence industries become deeply integrated, the relationship becomes harder to disentangle. Israeli companies become suppliers to American programmes. American companies become suppliers to Israeli systems. Production lines cross borders. Research becomes collaborative. Technologies become mutually dependent. Investment and employment become distributed through both economies.

The political cost of cutting Israel off would consequently rise for the United States itself.

This is the deeper meaning of the proposed transformation from “military aid” to “integration”. It could make the US-Israel relationship more resistant to precisely the kind of political pressure now growing around Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the occupied Palestinian territories.

The irony is extraordinary. “Super Sparta” is presented as Israel becoming independent from an increasingly hostile world. Yet the practical alternative may be deeper incorporation into the very US military-industrial system that has sustained Israel’s military power for decades.

This would also explain why Israel’s indigenous defence industry matters so much. The objective would not necessarily be to replace America. It would be to make Israel more indispensable to America.

That is a very different conception of self-reliance.

Israel would manufacture more of its own weapons, expand domestic production and reduce vulnerabilities in particular supply chains. But it would simultaneously become a technological partner, subcontractor, testing ground and weapons innovator within the wider US military system. The result could be a relationship of deeper symbiosis rather than diminished dependence — precisely the shift identified in recent Palestinian policy discussions of the future of US aid to Israel.

There is another dimension that should not be overlooked. Israel’s wars have become a laboratory for weapons and surveillance technologies. Systems developed and refined through Israeli military operations can subsequently be marketed internationally as “battle-tested”. The enormous growth of Israeli defence exports therefore creates a feedback loop: warfare generates technologies; warfare demonstrates those technologies; demonstrated technologies generate exports; exports strengthen the defence industry; and the strengthened defence industry provides greater capacity for further warfare.

That is not merely a military cycle. It is a political economy of permanent conflict.

The danger is therefore not that Israel will become a hermit state incapable of surviving without the world. The greater danger is that it could become a heavily militarised state whose international isolation is compensated for by an increasingly integrated military relationship with the United States and other defence markets.

“Super Sparta” would then not be an escape from dependence. It would be dependence redesigned as partnership.

And that raises the most important question of all. If the objective of international pressure is to persuade Israel to end occupation, halt the destruction of Palestinian life and accept political accountability, what happens when its military-industrial infrastructure is deliberately reorganised to make such pressure less effective?

The answer cannot be to admire Israel’s technological ingenuity or to debate whether it can manufacture enough missiles on its own. The political question is who pays for the machinery of occupation, who supplies it, who profits from it, who protects it diplomatically — and whether the United States is now contemplating a system in which Israel’s military capacity becomes so deeply woven into the American defence establishment that restraining Israel becomes structurally more difficult.

That would make “Super Sparta” far more than Netanyahu’s rhetoric about economic isolation.

It would represent an attempt to build an Israeli war machine that can withstand international condemnation by becoming indispensable to the military-industrial system of the world’s most powerful state.

And that is why the future of the US-Israel relationship may no longer be about how much aid America gives Israel.

It may increasingly be about how deeply the two military-industrial systems become one.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.