If you read the NATO charter, in particular Article 5, it makes pretty clear that NATO is a defensive military alliance.
And as long as it is defensive in nature, then it ipso facto can't be imperialist, since there is nothing imperialist about self-defense.
This reasoning doesn't make any sense. The Warsaw Pact was also avowedly defensive in nature, and of course the only countries it ever invaded were its own members. It would be absurd to allege that the Warsaw Pact was not imperialist because its charter made it clear that it was a defensive military alliance.
The most obvious parallel to NATO is, of course, the Delian League, a grouping of Athens and its allied states. This was also an association of self-defense, and as it happens the term "Delian League" is basically equivalent to "Athenian Empire". It may be that NATO is not an imperialist project (and in fact I am not claiming here that it is), but that argument would have to actually be made rather than ducking behind definitions and making vague associations.
I really do not think that this comparison makes much sense at all. Athens was incredibly abusive, cruel, and controlling to its “allies” in a way that the United States (which I assume you are using as the Athens analogue here) simply is not to its fellow NATO members.
The Delian League was an expansionist project; Athens would coerce other states into joining under threat of terrible reprisals if they did not. By contrast, NATO does not actively seek out new members. Countries wishing to join must apply on their own initiative, and the desire to join is usually rather stronger on their end than that of the US and other existing member states.
NATO has quite simply never done anything remotely comparable to the Athenians’ treatment of the Mytilenians and the Melians; it has in fact never launched a territorially expansionist war of aggression.
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