U.S. May Cut Troops in Europe, S. Korea in Force Restructuring

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.... We have to look at how we’re organized and arranged to deal with these new threats,” he said.

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.

As a result, the corps has deployed Marines without their families for six-month rotations. Generally, troops now based in Europe stay two years, accompanied by their families.

In South Korea -- where the end of the Korean War half a century ago has never been formalized with a treaty -- the United States maintains 38,000 troops, in one of the most heavily militarized regions of the world.

“Our objectives would be to maintain our military presence, to ensure our friends and allies, while deterring, if necessary, and defeating adversaries,” Fleischer said.

“We are seeking a ... U.S. presence suitable to each region, coupled with an ability to take effective military action promptly.”

Pentagon officials took care to present the possible moves as far from certain and unrelated to current tensions in both regions. And no precise time frame has been specified.

But reducing the number of U.S. troops in South Korea would help ease tensions with the government in Seoul, where massive anti-American demonstrations have taken place recently.

Tensions have risen over the United States’ hard-line response to North Korea’s admission last fall that it had a secret nuclear program and over road accidents involving U.S. military vehicles in which South Koreans have been killed.