Cheney Orders 40,000 Troops Out of Europe

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said today he has ordered 40,000 troops removed from Europe and their units dissolved during the coming 12 months.

“We have to begin the drawdown now to respond in an orderly way to changing security requirements and declining defense budgets,” Cheney said in a statement.

The decision has no direct connection to the U.S. force deployments in the Persian Gulf area.

The defense secretary said he ordered Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to remove 30,000 Army and 10,000 Air Force members from Europe, starting in October.

The United States currently has about 300,000 Army and Air Force personnel in Europe.

Lt. Col. Rick Oborn, a Pentagon spokesman, said the affected units in Europe would be deactivated but the soldiers and airmen would be transferred to other areas.

Cheney said that to allow planning time and to ease the logistics strain, no units will be deactivated before Jan. 1. He said it normally takes three to four months to close down a military unit once the deactivation order is issued.

Cheney said he made the decision to cut U.S. troop strength in Europe after consultation with the NATO allies and in anticipation of a successful conclusion by the end of the year of a 23-nation Conventional Forces in Europe agreement.

Under the current U.S. proposal at the CFE talks in Vienna, U.S. and Soviet forces in Europe would be reduced to 195,000 for each side. The Soviet Union has said it intends by the mid-1990s to remove all its troops from the European theater.

Cheney said details on which units will be closed down and a timetable for the withdrawals will be announced later by the headquarters of the U.S. Army Europe and U.S. Air Force Europe.

Cheney last month announced plans to shut 94 U.S. military facilities and reduce operations at 14 others in Germany over the next few years because of warming U.S.-Soviet relations and shrinking budgets in Washington.