Cheney Plans for Soviet Pullout in Europe by 1995

The Soviet Union is likely to pull all its troops from Europe by 1995, but the Western allies must remain wary of “the only nation on Earth capable of destroying the United States,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told Congress today.

Cheney said President Bush’s new proposal that Moscow and Washington seek agreement on deeper troop cuts in Europe than previously contemplated would “preserve . . . a viable, useful” American military presence on the continent.

Bush in his State of the Union speech Wednesday proposed reducing U.S. and Soviet combat forces in Europe 195,000 for each side--a drop of 50,000 from the previous U.S. proposal at East-West troop reduction talks now under way in Vienna.

Bush said that with “communism crumbling” in Eastern Europe, the time had come to swiftly conclude agreements limiting conventional, strategic and chemical weapons.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Cheney said “caution is still in order” in considering relaxing U.S. defenses, even though Moscow is reducing its military spending and is unlikely to initiate an attack on NATO territory.

“The Soviet Union remains the only nation on Earth capable of destroying the United States,” Cheney said, adding that even if all Soviet troops leave Eastern Europe, Moscow would retain its geographic advantage in the event of a European crisis.

Cheney said the Pentagon will present to Congress within a few months a revamped five-year plan for troop levels, deployments, weapons requirements and other strategic issues in light of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe.

Among the assumptions used in this planning, he said, is that “the Soviets will be out of Eastern Europe or virtually out of Eastern Europe five years hence, that the governments of Eastern Europe will be democratically elected, non-communist regimes.” He called this “a very real possibility.”

Cheney said it was important not to drop below a certain troop level in Europe.

Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the ranking Republican on the committee, sought and received an assurance from Cheney that the Administration would not consider going beyond Bush’s latest troop-cut proposal in the foreseeable future.

“This is the worst possible time to contemplate changes in strategy,” Warner said.