U.S. May Cut Troops in Europe, S. Korea in Force Restructuring
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is considering a major redeployment of U.S. troops out of South Korea and Germany, two Cold War hot spots, as it tries to realign the American military structure around the world, senior Bush administration officials said Tuesday.
Officials insisted that any shift would not be carried out to punish Germany for its opposition to a U.S.-led attack on Iraq. However, it could lead to further strains with Germany, where a reduction in the number of troops and their families could put new pressure on a struggling economy.
"Our current structures around the world are based on Cold War needs," White House Press Secretary Ari Fleischer said, "and while it helps to reinforce important alliance relationships and provides a forward presence and coalition training for U.S. forces, 11 years after the end of the Cold War, there is a school of thought to rethink the numbers and types of forces we have in different locations as events warrant."
Under the restructuring being considered, the Pentagon would station limited numbers of highly mobile units prepared for rapid deployment around the world, a senior Pentagon official said Tuesday.
"If increasingly the main purpose in being in Europe is sort of to have lily pads for jumping off to do things elsewhere in the world, then having a big, heavy, clunking footprint in Europe doesn't make a lot of sense," he said.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld took office two years ago with the goal of making the military more efficient and better able to respond to sudden demands around the globe.
Traveling in Europe last week, Rumsfeld told reporters that some troops might stay in Germany, some might be shifted to other countries and others might return to the U.S.
During the Cold War, "the purpose of our forces around the world was to deter and defend from the Soviet Union. Today threats are quite different
Of the 118,000 U.S. troops in Europe, 70,000 are in Germany. Throughout the Cold War, the troops in West Germany were considered to be on the front line of potential conflict with Soviet units deployed throughout the Warsaw Pact nations of Eastern Europe. In 1989, as the Cold War was winding down, 341,000 U.S. troops were deployed in Europe.
Marine Corps Gen. James L. Jones, the new supreme allied commander of NATO forces and U.S. troops in Europe, is pushing a restructuring. As Marine Corps commandant, he favored spreading bare-bones bases around the world rather than limiting forces to a few sprawling ones.
