These force are tripwires at best. Take American intel, cyber capacity, platform numbers and forces deployed, and firepower out of the equation and then see if NATO still is a threat the Russians need to worry about.
Behind the curtain, behind the stage, the show is run, maintained and supported by the US, there can be zero doubt about it. Nato minus the US is not even close to be even 50% of what it now is.
There is also a legislation that bans any US forces to obey command to a non-US commander. That is one of the reasons why every NATO supreme commander so far has been an American.
In NATO nothing works against the will or without the approval of Wshsington. Nothing.
Which may even be just fair, considering that the US bears the by far biggest share of NATO's combat power - and its costs.
To me the problem is not that the American side is so strong in NATO, but that the European "partners" have decided to
want to be so weak. For many Europeans, even a running war is not so much a military problem, but an issue of abstract politics that obeys to politics's ways - not to military needs and military events. And when it gets demonstrated by reality that this is a big self-deception and wars get run by bombers and tanks and cannons and riufles, the same polticians run around like chicken with a lot of wing beating and loud and noisy cackling, thinking this makes thing stop. Strength is to cackle loud and show a colourful featherdress.
Hahaha.
However, the relation between the US and Europe is clear. The one is the dominant hegemon, the other is the sometimes more, sometimes less obedient vasall, at least in military affairs. The gulf wars and Afghanistan have illustrated that quite clearly.