The NATO way of fighting in Airland Battle has gone defunct. NATO used to be more about trying to occupy defensive positions quickly before launching counterattacks against heavy Pact assaults. Unfortunately, cities tend to be deathtraps now, and you had best hope that you're not going toe to toe with pact armor in the open fields. That said, you can still force tactical stalemates if you can keep control of the skies. NATO tanks tend to wreck when they get the first shot, so if you can deny Pact their air support, then you're in for a fun game of maneuver warfare.
EDIT: In the earliest days of Airland Battle, before Pact players realized they needed an air-spammy support deck to overwhelm NATO positions for assaults, I played a super-heavy air car deck. Drop an entire army into a city with enough AA to ward off smaller air threats and reinforced faster than Pact could whittle my infantry down. Medium tanks came in as support.
EDITEDIT: and the whole battle would literally hinge around wherever I held up, Pact players trying to isolate my defensive bubble.
EDITEDITEDIT: Red Dragon's maps also tend to be more open, with cities usually not positioned as defensively as they were before. I've recreated my air cat tactic, but it was a high-casualty affair on both sides of the matter. It might have faired bettered with higher-quality armor to take up key firing positions, but I think they would just get overwhelmed by the more numerous Pact armor.
EDIT^4: I think the biggest drawback of the system I was running in Red Dragon was probably the more rigid defensive lines I held. With medium-quality troops, I ended up just replacing them as they perished to hold the line. This generally led them getting whittled down slowly until there wasn't enough of a force left to pull off an elastic defense--they'd just get slaughtered.
I think for my next deck (whenever I play Red Dragon) I'll go for a sniper build... based around higher-quality armor positioned so as to hit the enemy before they can hit back, with medium/basic-quality troops held in reserve to counterattack without necessarily losing an important unit.
Not so much an elastic defense as I wouldn't have enough line-units to re-take positions, but rather a harass then counterattack style.