I lived in Germany in the 1980's. I was a bar manager in an O Club in Darmstadt. I remember being amazed at the size of the US presence at that time. I had never been in the military, and had no idea. We had 300,000 personnel and their families in Germany.

As Scott Ritter points out, those days are long gone. Still, NATO serves the US empire by providing an excuse for the US to maintain its "Lilly pads" in various countries, in order to exert pressure and influence.

By maintaining NATO, this gives the US a "fig leaf" to hide its imperial extensions.