No Cold War, Bush Free to Move Troops : Superpowers: U.S. forces are no longer needed to face a Soviet threat in Europe.

President Bush’s announcement Thursday that he is sending nearly a quarter million more troops to the Persian Gulf reflects the military payoff for the end of the Cold War and 18 months of massive change in the international balance of power.

No longer needed to stand guard against the Soviet Union in Europe, an entire Army corps--about 110,000 soldiers--will be moved from Germany to Saudi Arabia, cutting U.S. armed forces in Europe in half.

In addition, six of the nation’s 10 combat-ready aircraft carrier battle groups will be sailing in Middle Eastern waters, part of a Navy fleet that is expected to reach 90 ships.

And, when Bush is finished, more than half the U.S. Marine Corps will be deployed opposite Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s troops.

All told, the additional deployments will increase American armed forces in the Persian Gulf region to nearly half a million, more than the United States has stationed in Europe since World War II and roughly equivalent to the peak force strength in Vietnam.

For months, U.S. strategists and military officials had talked of shifting the priorities of the armed forces away from the old Cold War battle lines and toward new areas of conflict in the Third World. But the deployment announced Thursday is the first time that talk has been made real.

“Clearly, our ability to move forces out of Europe to support (Operation) Desert Shield is a direct result of the fact that the threat level in Europe is down,” Defense Secretary Dick Cheney said at a Pentagon news conference.

Because of the overwhelming changes that have taken place in Eastern Europe in the past year, “there is no military risk,” Cheney said.

In a sense, the ability to shift massive forces from Central Europe to the Persian Gulf is Bush’s version of the “peace dividend” that many had foreseen as a result of the end of Cold War tensions.

On Bush’s left, liberal Democrats had envisioned spending the peace dividend on increased domestic programs in the United States. On his right, some conservative activists had called for the United States to use the end of the Cold War as an occasion for ending commitments overseas altogether.

The Desert Shield strategy, Bush has said repeatedly, will require continued heavy spending on the military, although he has acknowledged that the defense budget can shrink somewhat. Even before Thursday’s announcement, the Administration had estimated the cost of the operation at about $18 billion, assuming there is no war. American allies have agreed to foot a major share of that bill, but as costs escalate, a larger share must come from U.S. taxpayers.

As the centerpiece of its strategy, the Administration has embraced America’s former adversary, the Soviet Union, as an ally, seeking to use that alliance to increase American ability to influence events halfway across the globe.

“It is good to have this solid front between ourselves and the Soviet Union,” Bush said as he announced the new Persian Gulf deployment.

To be sure, the United States is not totally abandoning the European commitments that formed the center of American national security policy for more than four decades.

“We still have a corps in Europe,” said Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

But U.S. officials said the remaining troops in Europe are there to help maintain stability among the many potentially quarrelsome, smaller nations of the continent, not to confront the Soviets. Strategists are convinced that the Soviets are now too enmeshed in their own domestic problems to pose a threat to European peace.

The full size of the American deployment in the Persian Gulf, once the additional troops and equipment arrive by mid-January, will dwarf the remaining forces in Europe and will vividly demonstrate how completely and rapidly U.S. military priorities have changed.

As recently as 18 months ago, U.S. officials were willing to contemplate only token reductions in European forces. And in August, during the first phase of the gulf buildup, U.S. military commanders avoided taking troops out of Europe instead of sending divisions from the United States. The U.S.-based forces were better trained and suited for desert summertime conditions, Pentagon officials said at the time.

Now, however, the European-based forces will be needed to provide Operation Desert Shield with the punch needed for an offensive if Hussein refuses to back down in Kuwait.

The Administration already had been planning to reduce U.S. troop strength in Europe. Congress has mandated a cut of 50,000 troops. And a treaty scheduled to be signed later this month in Paris would reduce all nations’ non-nuclear forces in Europe, cutting the number of tanks, planes and artillery that the United States could keep on the continent.