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| Sunday, 15 August 2004 |
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U.S. to pull 70,000 troops from Europe, Asia WASHINGTON, Aug 14 (Reuters) The United States plans to withdraw about 70,000 U.S. troops from Europe and Asia in a major restructuring of military forces prompted by the end of the Cold War and the beginning of the war on terrorism, U.S. officials said on Saturday. President George W. Bush will unveil the realignment in a speech on Monday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Cincinnati, Ohio, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The president is going to make an announcement about a major initiative to reduce the burden on our forces overseas," said one of the U.S. officials. The officials confirmed a report in the Financial Times of a total reduction of about 70,000 troops in U.S. deployments overseas. The British newspaper, citing people briefed on the plan, said two-thirds of the reductions would be made in Europe, mostly in Germany. There are more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Europe, including about 70,000 in Germany, and another 100,000 in the Pacific region and Asia. About 150,000 troops are stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. A senior administration official traveling with Bush in Portland, Oregon, said the president "will be discussing next week how the United States will structure its military capabilities to meet the threats of the 21st century with new technologies and new capabilities. "It's important not that our military posture reflect the Cold War but the new threats of the 21st century," said the senior official. Like the official traveling with Bush, officials in Washington refused to provide details, beyond saying there would be a major realignment. One official said there would be a "fairly significant reduction" in forces. "This is not a diminished commitment to our allies or to our responsibilities in the world," said another official. The U.S. military announced earlier this year that it was removing about 12,500 of the 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea for decades and sending many of them to Iraq or Afghanistan. One U.S. official said, however, some of those troops could be returned to South Korea. "Germany is definitely a place where there will be a major re-arrangement," said an official. Pentagon officials have been studying U.S. commitments overseas for more than two years in an initiative to re-arrange the ponderous global deployments of U.S. forces adopted in the Cold War and make the American military more mobile in the new war on terrorism. The proposed move includes plans to use bases in Eastern European countries of the former Soviet bloc as transit points to send U.S. forces to trouble spots such as the Middle East and northern Africa. While many troops would be brought home, sophisticated weaponry, including fighter planes, would be sent overseas to some bases to make up for the smaller number of ground troops. The U.S. Air Force, for example, was currently discussing plans to deploy heavy bombers and new F/A-22 jets to Guam in the Pacific to address possible future threat from North Korea and China.. |
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