Is NATO just another arm of the US military?

Recent engagements in Afghanistan and Libya have led some to assert that NATO is now a psuedo-arm of the US military. And while US military forces have taken the lead in various conflicts, Robert Kaplan contends in an article on Stratfor.com that, in fact, this has been the case for some time.

“Even during the Cold War, NATO was wholly dominated by the United States.  Moreover, northern European countries always did far more inside NATO than their  southern neighbors, which from the 1950s through the 1980s were mainly bribed  and bullied to go along and be quiet,” he notes.