Er, What "communist friends" would they be that we are 'deterring' then?
Of course NATO is capitalist, we live in a capitalist market economy after all and it is the structure we put in place to ensure we remained that way. While the threat may have gone I do not believe that NATO is redundant, it has a different set of threats to face now and has more of a place as a European-North American security forum than straight forward territorial defence.
REDs under the bed eh FJJP?