US troop restructuring aims to build stronger force

The planned realignment of American military forces, announced by President George W. Bush Monday, aims to transform the US military into a lighter, more lethal and more flexible force.

Addressing Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Cincinnati City, President Bush said that the US will redeploy up to 70,000 troops in Europe and Asia to new countries or back to the US over the next decade.

Bush, during a stop in the campaign battleground state of Ohio, said that he envisions a more agile and lethal military than the one designed for the Cold War, a reshaped force that could respond quickly to modern threats such as terrorists and rogue states.

The US president refrained from providing details of the troop reductions. But Pentagon officials said that as part of the plan, two Army divisions - up to 30,000 troops - could be shifted out of Germany as early as 2006, removing units that had been placed there to counter threats from the Soviet Union. They are to be replaced by a smaller, highly mobile brigade.

Some of the troops would be moved to posts in Eastern Europe while others would be based in the US, available for deployment overseas, White House officials said. However, it remained unclear if the overall number of US troops stationed overseas would drop.

Currently the US has about 100,000 troops based in Europe, with about 70 percent of those in Germany. Another 100,000 are scattered throughout Asia and the Pacific, with heavy concentrations in Japan and South Korea.

Analysts said that the planned realignment of American troops will be the most significant restructuring of the US forces overseas since the end of the Cold War, to accommodate changes and meet challenges in world politics and security since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The plan is the result of an extensive review of the nation's defense posture that was launched shortly after President Bush took office. White House aides insist that it is not designed to provide more troops for military operations in Iraq. But the president left no doubt the new realities of the war on terror had an impact on decision-makers.

The Bush administration still intends to retain a ring of permanent military hubs in closely allied countries, including Germany, Britain, Italy and Japan. But many other bases that the US has relied on would be supplanted by a number of spare "forward operating sites" such as those planned for Eastern Europe.

Other countries would be designated as "cooperative security locations," providing staging areas that the US forces could occupy quickly in a conflict. These locations would have no permanent US military presence but could be used periodically for training exercises.

Romania, Bulgaria and Poland have already expressed an interest in hosting the US military. The potential plan is to set up small "forward operating sites" or "forward operating locations" in those countries that could host anything from airstrips to training facilities.

Those installations will provide bare-bones accommodations and short-term training possibilities for US troops in the coming years. Their locations in Eastern Europe are part of a long-term shift of military personnel away from Cold War fronts like Europe to new hotspots in the Middle East and Africa.

Apart from the Sept. 11 attacks, Analysts said, changes in relations across the Atlantic Ocean and the eastward movement of US strategic interests are also factors that contribute to the US repositioning of its troops in Europe.

Differences over the US-led war in Iraq deteriorated ties between the US, and Germany and France, two of its traditional allies, and the war led to the emergence of what US Defense

Secretary Donald Rumsfeld termed a "new Europe" - those Eastern European nations that supported the Iraq war.

Source: Xinhua