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This is the first part of a series examining the challenges facing the NATO alliance.
As President Donald Trump steps up pressure on NATO allies to increase defense spending — and has ordered the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany over the next six to 12 months — a deeper issue is coming into focus: Even as ally budgets are growing, NATO is still heavily dependent on U.S. military power to function.
NATO’s rebalancing isn’t ideological — and it’s not new, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg told Fox News Digital “I said to the President… maybe you should talk about a level relationship with NATO,” Kellogg described a conversation he had with Trump in his first term about the future of the alliance. “…We need to develop, for lack of a better term, a new NATO, a new defensive alignment with Europe.”
Kellogg, who served as a senior national security official during Trump’s first term, said the alliance has expanded politically, but not militarily — leading to what he sees as a growing gap between commitments and actual capability.
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer pose during the NATO Heads of State and Government Summit in The Hague, Netherlands, June 25, 2025. (Ben Stansell/Pool/Reuters)
“You started with 12, and you got to 32, and in the process, I think, you diluted the effectiveness,” he argued, calling today’s NATO “a very bloated architecture.”
“They haven’t put money into defense. Their defense industry and defense forces are emaciated. When you look at the Britons right now, they can barely deploy troops: they have two aircraft carriers, both under maintenance. Their brigades work like one out of six. And you just look at the capability, it’s not there. So I think we need to realize that and say, OK, we need to do something different,” said Kellogg, who is a U.S. First is co-chair of the Center for American Security at Foreign Security. The Policy Institute told Fox News Digital.
But not everyone agrees that the alliance is losing relevance.
US Army War College research professor John R. “It has never been more relevant,” said Denny, who says NATO remains central to America’s national security.
“There are two reasons for this,” he said. “One, it’s our comparative advantage over the Chinese and the Russians… They don’t have anything like that.”
“And the second reason … NATO underpins the security and stability of our most important trade and investment relationships,” he said, referring to economic ties between North America and Europe.
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NATO defense chiefs hold a meeting in Brussels on August 20, 2025, with a screen showing allied leaders joining remotely to discuss Ukraine. (Fox News)
Dependency: Design or weakness?
According to analysis provided by Barack Seiner of the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank, around 2010, the United States accounted for about 65% to 70% of NATO’s defense spending.
Kellogg said of European allies, “They have always been dependent on America.”
“Allies by and large rely on each other for deterrence and defense,” Denny said, explaining that alliances exist to “pool their resources” and “pool their individual powers.”
Denny pointed to ground forces as a clear example of what the US benefits from the alliance, noting that “there are far more allied mechanized infantry forces on the ground than there are Americans on the ground.”
Still, he acknowledged that the dependency sometimes went too far.
“In the past…it was fair to say that European allies were highly dependent on the Americans for conventional defense,” he said, referring to the 2000s.
This was partly driven by US priorities, he said – as Washington pushed European allies to focus on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than regional defence.
A Polish Army soldier sits in a tank with a NATO flag waving in the background during the NATO Noble Jump VJTF exercise in Zagan, Poland, June 18, 2015. (Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
Seiner has described NATO as “formally collective, but functionally asymmetric”, with the US providing a disproportionate share of “high-level capabilities”.
That disparity is most visible in nuclear deterrence.
Seiner said the US provides the overwhelming majority of NATO’s nuclear arsenal – including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched systems and strategic bombers – meaning deterrence ultimately depends on the perception of US retaliation.
A NATO official told Fox News Digital that, “The US nuclear deterrent cannot be replaced, but it is clear that Europe needs to step up. There is no question about that. There needs to be a better balance when it comes to our defense and security. Both because we see the important role the US plays around the world and the resources it demands, and also because it is entirely appropriate.”
“The good news is that Allies are doing just that. They are moving forward, working together – and with the United States – to ensure we have what we collectively need to deter and protect the one billion people living in the Euro-Atlantic region,” the official said.
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Boeing CH-47 Chinook helicopters from the U.S. Army’s 12th Combat Aviation Brigade fly over a Lithuanian Vilkas infantry fighting vehicle during Allied Spirit 25 military exercises near Hohenfels, Germany, March 12, 2025.
System NATO cannot replace
Beyond nuclear weapons, interdependence runs through the operational backbone of the alliance.
Seiner described US-provided intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance – as well as logistics and command systems – as essential to NATO operations.
“Without U.S. intelligence and surveillance, NATO loses situational awareness and early warning capabilities,” Seiner said, “so that means Russia could, for example, attack Europe.” And theoretically, if there is no NATO and the US is not involved, Europe would not know, or it would take a very long time to be able to defend itself.
Kellogg also says that most of Europe’s military capabilities fall short of top-tier systems.
“For the most part, their instruments, if you had to grade it A, B, C, D, E, F, they’re like B players or C players,” he said. “This is not the first line of work.”
He pointed to air and missile defense as a key differentiator, noting that while European countries rely on US-made systems like Patriot and THAAD, “they don’t have a system that is comparable.”
Kellogg attributed this to years of underinvestment and said that European defense industries “are depleted,” adding that the United States is also now “learning to do it again.”
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President Donald Trump and President Andrzej Duda of Poland speak during a working lunch at the NATO leaders’ summit in Watford, Britain, on December 4, 2019. (Kevin Lamarck/Reuters)
Denny said today the picture is more mixed.
Citing Russia’s 2014 invasion of Crimea as a turning point, he said, “The alliance’s defense spending has increased… and even more so after 2022.”
But he cautioned that achieving capacity takes time, noting that many reforms are still years away from full deployment.
Denny pointed to recent European purchases of American systems as evidence of the growing capability, noting that countries including Poland, Romania, Norway and Denmark are receiving F-35 fighter jets from the US.
“You can’t build an F-35 overnight,” he said, adding that many of these improvements will take years to fully realize.
A NATO official told Fox News Digital that the alliance “needs to move further and faster” to deal with growing threats, pointing to new capability targets agreed by defense ministers in June 2025.
Keith Kellogg speaks during the Warsaw Security Forum in Poland on September 30, 2025. (Marek Antoni Ivanczuk/Nurfoto via Getty Images)
The official said priorities include air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics and large ground forces, noting that while details are classified, plans include a five-fold increase in air and missile defense, “thousands more” armored vehicles and tanks and “millions more” artillery shells. NATO also aims to double key enabling capabilities such as logistics, transportation and medical support.
The official said the allies are increasing investments in warships, aircraft, drones, long-range missiles as well as space and cyber capabilities, as well as increasing readiness and modernizing command and control.
“These targets are now included in national plans,” the official said. He said allies must demonstrate how they will meet them through sustained defense spending and capability development.
The NATO official also said European allies lead multinational forces in Central and Eastern Europe, while the US and Canada serve as framework nations in Poland and Latvia, as well as the ongoing air policing mission in Kosovo and NATO’s KFOR operation.
A Swedish Air Force JAS 39 Gripen fighter aircraft takes off over southern Sweden on April 2, 2011. (AP Photo/Scanpix/Patrick Soderstrom, File)
What will happen if America gets pulled in?
Kellogg’s warning is simple: NATO’s deterrence depends on the American presence.
“The one you always have to worry about … is Russia,” said Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia in 2025.
If US forces are tied down elsewhere, NATO could face serious strains – particularly in areas such as intelligence and logistics.
The danger for Kellogg is delay. “We won’t know until it happens,” he said. “And then you won’t be able to answer it.”
However, Denny said the alliance remains a strategic asset – not a liability.
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A NATO military force stands guard outside the World Forum in The Hague ahead of the two-day NATO summit on June 22, 2025. (Remco de Waal/ANP/AFP)
He suggests that the question is not whether NATO still works. The point is whether partners can adapt fast enough to keep it going.
