This is part one of a series examining the challenges confronting the NATO alliance.

NATO has become a “bloated architecture” too dependent on American military power, former senior national security advisor Keith Kellogg told Fox News Digital.

As President Donald Trump pressures NATO allies to spend more on defense — ordering the withdrawal of 5,000 U.S. troops from Germany and signaling possible cuts in Spain and Italy — a deeper concern is emerging inside the alliance: despite years of rising European defense budgets, NATO still depends heavily on American military power, from missile defense and intelligence to logistics and nuclear deterrence. 

The growing gap between political commitments and real military capability is now fueling calls for structural changes inside the alliance as NATO confronts mounting threats from Russia and instability in the Middle East.

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NATO’s imbalance is not theoretical — and it is not new, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg told Fox News Digital, “I told the president… maybe you ought to talk about a tiered relationship with NATO,” Kellogg described conversations with Trump in his first term about the alliance’s future. “…we need to develop a new, for lack of a better term, a new NATO a new defensive alignment with  Europe.”

Kellogg added the alliance has expanded politically but not militarily — creating what he sees as a growing gap between commitments and real capability.

“You started with 12, and you went to 32, and in the process, I think you diluted the impact,” he argued, calling today’s NATO “a very bloated architecture.”

“They haven’t put the money into defense. Their defense industry and defense forces have atrophied. When you look at the Brits right now, they could barely deploy forces: they have two aircraft carriers, both under maintenance. Their brigades are like one out of six that work. And you just look at the capability, it’s just not there. So I think we need to realize that and say, well, we need something different,” Kellogg, who is the co-chair of the Center for American Security at the America First Foreign Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital.

But not everyone agrees the alliance is losing relevance.

“It has never been more relevant,” said John R. Deni, a research professor at the U.S. Army War College, who says NATO remains central to U.S. national security.

“The reason for that is twofold,” he said. “One, it’s our comparative advantage versus the Chinese and the Russians… they don’t have anything like this.”

“And the second reason… NATO underwrites the security and stability of our most important trade and investment relationship,” he added, referring to economic ties between North America and Europe.

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Dependence: Design or Weakness?

By around 2010, the United States accounted for roughly 65% to 70% of NATO defense spending, according to analysis provided by Barak Seener from the Henry Jackson Society, a London-based think tank.

“They’ve always been dependent on the U.S.,” Kellogg said of the European allies.

“The allies overall rely upon one another for deterrence and defense by design,” Deni said, explaining that alliances exist to “pool their resources” and “aggregate their individual strengths.”

Deni pointed to ground forces as a clear example of what the U.S. gains from the alliance, noting that “there are far more allied mechanized infantry forces on the ground than there are Americans.”

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Still, he acknowledged that reliance has at times gone too far.

“In the past… it was fair to say that the European allies were overly reliant upon the Americans for conventional defense,” he said, pointing to the 2000s.

That, he said, was partly driven by U.S. priorities — as Washington pushed European allies to focus on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq rather than territorial defense.

Seener describes NATO as “formally collective, but functionally asymmetric,” with the U.S. providing a disproportionate share of “high-end capabilities.”

That asymmetry is most visible in nuclear deterrence.

Seener said the U.S. provides the overwhelming majority of NATO’s nuclear arsenal — including intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched systems and strategic bombers — meaning deterrence ultimately relies on the assumption of U.S. retaliation.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital that, “The U.S. nuclear deterrent cannot be replaced, but it is clear that Europe needs to step up. There’s no question. There needs to be a better balance when it comes to our defense and security. Both because we see the vital role the U.S. plays around the world and the resources that it demands, and also because it is only fair.”

“The good news,” the official added, “is that the Allies are doing exactly that. They are stepping up, working together — and with the U.S. — to ensure we collectively have what we need to deter and defend one billion people living across the Euro-Atlantic area.”

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The Systems NATO Cannot Replace

Beyond nuclear weapons, the dependence runs through the alliance’s operational backbone.

Seener pointed to U.S.-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,” Seener said, adding, “So that means that Russia, for example, can attack Europe. And theoretically, if there’s no NATO and the U.S. is not involved, Europe would not be aware, or it would take it too long to be able to defend itself.”

Kellogg also says that much of Europe’s military capability falls short of top-tier systems.

“For the most part, their equipment, if you had to grade it A, B, C, D, E, F, they’re kind of like B players or C players,” he said. “It’s not the first line of work.”

He pointed to air and missile defense as a key gap, noting that while European countries rely on U.S.-made systems such as Patriot and THAAD, “they don’t have a system that’s comparable.”

Kellogg attributed that to years of underinvestment, saying European defense industries “have atrophied,” adding that the United States is also now “relearning that as well.”

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Deni said the picture today is more mixed.

“Alliance defense spending has been up… and has spiked far more after 2022,” he said, pointing to Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 as a turning point.

But he cautioned that capability gains take time, noting that many improvements are still years away from full deployment.

Deni pointed to recent European purchases of U.S. systems as evidence of growing capability, noting that countries including Poland, Romania, Norway and Denmark are acquiring the F-35 fighter jet from the U.S.

“You can’t build an F-35 overnight,” he said, adding that many of these improvements will take years to fully materialize.

A NATO official told Fox News Digital the alliance “needs to move further and faster” to meet growing threats, pointing to new capability targets agreed by defense ministers in June 2025.

The official said priorities include air and missile defense, long-range weapons, logistics and large land forces, noting that while details remain classified, plans call for a fivefold 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 added that allies are increasing investments in warships, aircraft, drones, long-range missiles, as well as space and cyber capabilities, while boosting readiness and modernizing command and control.

“These targets are now included in national plans,” the official said, adding that allies must demonstrate how they will meet them through sustained defense spending and capability development.

The NATO official also noted that European allies lead multinational forces across Central and Eastern Europe, while the U.S. and Canada serve as framework nations in Poland and Latvia, alongside ongoing air policing missions and NATO’s KFOR operation in Kosovo.

What happens if the U.S. is stretched?

Kellogg’s warning is direct: NATO’s deterrence depends on U.S. presence.

“The one you always have to worry about… is Russia,” Kellogg, who was Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine and Russia in 2025, said.

If U.S. forces are tied down elsewhere, NATO could face serious strain — particularly in areas like intelligence and logistics.

For Kellogg, the danger is delay. “We won’t know until it happens,” he said. “And then you won’t be able to respond to it.”

Deni, however, said the alliance remains a strategic asset — not a liability.

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The question, he suggests, is not whether NATO still works. It is whether allies can adapt fast enough to keep it working.

The Spain that knocked on Europe’s door 40 years ago was a country that had only just emerged from 40 years of dictatorship.

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Spain’s democratic transition, still fragile in some respects, found in European integration an institutional anchor, a guarantee that the freedoms it had won would not be reversed.

Felipe González, who had applied for membership in 1977 as leader of the Socialist opposition and was now governing as prime minister, saw it clearly: joining Europe was not just about economics. It was a statement of political identity. Spain was rejoining the community of democratic nations from which Francoism had excluded it.

The figures for that Spain of 1986 show how far back the starting point was: per capita income was around 7,300 euros, life expectancy was 76 and the population had yet to reach 38 million.

Exports accounted for barely 4.9% of GDP and infrastructure lagged decades behind European standards. Forty years on, per capita income is above 31,000 euros, life expectancy has reached 84 and exports have climbed to 34% of GDP.

None of these transformations can be separated from EU membership.

The early years: opening up and the shock

The initial stages of integration were not easy. Spain had to face the abrupt opening of its market to European competition, which triggered tensions across whole sectors of the economy, especially in industry and agriculture.

The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) profoundly reshaped the Spanish countryside, forcing through painful reconversions but also opening up new markets for Mediterranean products. Olive oil, fruit, wine: Spanish agriculture found in Europe a stage for expansion that had been unthinkable until then.

At the same time, European structural funds began to flow into a country that was in desperate need of them. The motorways that now link the Peninsula, the trains that criss-cross the country, the modernised ports, the telecommunications systems: all of this was built to a large extent with financial backing from Brussels.

In four decades, Spain has received more than 185 billion euros in European funds for infrastructure, employment, innovation and regional development. Without that injection, modernisation would have taken generations longer.

An unexpected symbol of those early years was the Erasmus programme, launched by the European Community in 1987. What began as a modest university exchange initiative gradually became the defining experience of a generation.

Spain became the country that receives the most Erasmus students in all of Europe, and more than 1.6 million Spaniards have taken part in the programme over these four decades. For many young people, Erasmus was not just a semester abroad: it was the first time they truly felt European.

Maastricht and the dream of the single currency

The year 1992 marked a turning point for all of Europe, and Spain was fully aware of its significance. The signing of the Treaty on European Union in Maastricht transformed the European Economic Community into the European Union proper and opened the way to the single currency.

For Spain, Maastricht also meant taking on economic convergence commitments that required deep reforms: deficit control, keeping inflation in check, budgetary discipline. It was the price of having a seat at the top table.

In parallel, 1995 brought another of the great achievements of the European project: the entry into force of the Schengen Agreement in Spain, alongside Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal.

For the first time in modern history, citizens could cross Europe’s internal borders without showing their passport. The Schengen area was not just a convenience for tourists; it was the physical embodiment of an idea: that in Europe, people’s freedom of movement was a right, not a privilege.

And then the euro arrived. On 1 January 1999, Spain became one of the eleven founding countries of the eurozone, adopting the single currency for financial and commercial transactions.

On 1 January 2002, notes and coins reached citizens’ pockets and the peseta disappeared for good. It was a moment full of emotion and also tinged with a certain melancholy: the peseta was being abandoned, a currency with centuries of history, but something bigger was being gained, the feeling of sharing an economic destiny with hundreds of millions of Europeans.

Fittingly, it was at a summit held in Madrid in December 1995 that European leaders finally agreed on the name of the new currency: the euro.

Institutional leadership on five occasions

Over these 40 years, Spain has not limited itself to benefiting from the European project: it has also helped to build it. Since 1986, the country has held the Presidency of the Council of the European Union on five occasions, the most recent in the second half of 2023, under the motto “Europe, closer”, making it one of the member states most committed to driving the Union forward institutionally.

Three presidents of the European Parliament and nine European commissioners have been Spaniards over these four decades, a presence that reflects Spain’s growing weight in Europe’s political architecture.

Spain has also helped design some of the EU’s most important policies. It played a leading role in developing cohesion policy and in boosting the EU’s social dimension.

It was instrumental in including in the Amsterdam Treaty a sanctions mechanism for states that breached the Union’s fundamental values. And for decades it has played a distinctive role as a bridge between Europe and Ibero-America, drawing on its historical, cultural and linguistic ties with Latin America to enhance the EU’s external projection.

The great crisis and test of the euro

The years of the Great Recession brutally tested the strength of the European project and Spain’s resilience. The 2008 financial crisis triggered a devastating recession in the country: unemployment climbed above 26% in 2013, the construction sector collapsed and the financial system had to be partially bailed out with European funds.

The austerity policies imposed from Brussels fuelled deep social discontent and fed European scepticism among parts of the population that had borne the brunt of the cuts.

Even so, Spain did not abandon the euro or the European project. It opted for reform and recovery within the EU framework, and from 2014 it entered a growth cycle that was among the strongest in the eurozone. Painful as it was, the crisis also ended up showing that EU membership offered a safety net that would have been unimaginable alone.

The banking rescue coordinated by the European institutions, the financial solidarity mechanisms, access to capital markets underpinned by the European Central Bank: without Europe, the fallout could have been much more severe.

The pandemic and the NextGenerationEU funds

If the 2008 crisis was a test of endurance, the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was something different: a demonstration that European solidarity could evolve into new, more ambitious forms.

For the first time in the history of European integration, the Union took on joint debt to finance the recovery of its member states. The NextGenerationEU funds made more than 140 billion euros in grants and loans available to Spain, the largest injection of European resources in the country’s history.

The pandemic was also a reminder that, when it works, European solidarity is an extraordinary asset. The coordination in vaccine purchasing, the European COVID certificate that made it possible to restore mobility, the joint response to an unprecedented threat: all this showed European citizens, Spaniards included, that the EU project was not just a market but also a community of shared destiny.

Forty years of transformation

The numbers tell a powerful story. Spanish exports of goods rose from 12.6 billion euros in 1986 to 141.5 billion in 2024. Real GDP has grown by more than 100% since accession. Life expectancy has increased by eight years over the past four decades.

The population has grown by more than 10 million people, largely thanks to immigration made possible by European prosperity. And more than 1.4 million young Spaniards have benefited from the European Youth Guarantee scheme to get into work.

The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has marked the day on his x.com account, stressing that the European Union is Spaniards’ home and future, as well as their privilege and their responsibility.

The challenges of the next 40 years

The anniversary is not only a time for celebration. It is also a moment for honest reflection on what still remains to be built. Territorial inequalities between the autonomous communities remain significant.

The green transition, population ageing, digital transformation and migration flows pose challenges that no country can face alone. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has reshaped Europe’s security map and forces Spain to rethink its contribution to common defence, as we have also seen with the US–Iran conflict and threats against European bases.

The new generations, who have grown up knowing no reality other than the European one, expect the Union to respond more effectively to these challenges. For them, Europe is not a historic achievement to be defended, but a starting point to be improved. That demand, far from being a threat to the project, is perhaps its best guarantee for the future.

Forty years on from that January night in 1986, European membership is now so taken for granted that it is hard to imagine Spain outside it.