U.S. Sees No Threatening Soviet Moves : Military: The Pentagon says the worldwide American alert status has not been increased.

The Pentagon said Monday that it has detected no threatening military moves by the Soviet Union after the coup that deposed President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and that it has not increased the alert status of U.S. forces around the globe.

The Pentagon, like other U.S. agencies, was completely surprised by the right-wing takeover, although military intelligence analysts had warned pointedly in recent weeks that Gorbachev was in increasing peril.

But no one predicted the timing of the coup.

“We had no warning of this,” a senior defense official said.

The Defense Department immediately suspended all military-to-military contacts with the Soviet Union and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney rushed back to Washington from a fishing trip in British Columbia to meet with President Bush and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“We have seen no provocative actions. The strategic picture is very calm,” a senior Pentagon official said. “Troops in the streets are certainly provocative and represent at least a temporary reversal of the trend toward democracy. It is something that gives us great concern but threatening would not be the right word for it.”

U.S. and Soviet military officers have been engaged in a broad program of reciprocal visits that began several years ago under the direction of former Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. William J. Crowe Jr. and Soviet Defense Minister Dmitri T. Yazov. Yazov was one of the leaders of the conservative group that deposed Gorbachev.

Yazov and Crowe had established a special communications link that was supposed to be used to keep each other informed of important military developments in their respective countries. Yazov did not use the phone line to notify Powell of the sudden change of government in Moscow, a JCS aide said Monday.

Powell visited the Soviet Union in late July to discuss pending arms control agreements and the conversion of Soviet military industries to civilian production. He met with Yazov and was given reassurances about peaceful Soviet intentions. The chairman left Moscow optimistic about improving ties with the Soviet military.

“The relationship is growing so that we may well see” joint military exercises in the near future, Powell said shortly after returning from the Soviet Union.

Cheney, early in his tenure as defense secretary, predicted that Gorbachev would fail in his reform efforts and would be replaced by hard-liners more hostile to the West. He endured much criticism from Congress for submitting Pentagon budgets that placed considerable emphasis on responding to a continuing Soviet military threat.

His spending plans were built around the concept of “reversibility,” in that U.S. troop reductions in Europe and elsewhere could be relatively quickly reversed if East-West tensions rose.

Defense officials said Monday that U.S. troop withdrawals from Europe will continue despite the coup but warned that the process could be halted or reversed if Moscow alters its current defensive military posture in Eastern Europe.

The United States currently maintains about 280,000 troops in Europe, but that number is scheduled to decline by about 100,000 over the next two years.

“The return of U.S. troops from Europe has to continue,” a high-level defense planner said. “There doesn’t seem to be an option.”

Officials noted that changing large-scale troop movements is akin to changing course on a supertanker. Even if orders were given today to reverse the withdrawals, it would take months to implement them, a senior Army officer said.

There are now 323,000 Soviet troops in eastern Germany and Poland, down from 395,000 in early 1990. Virtually all Soviet forces have been withdrawn from former Warsaw Pact allies Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

An official Pentagon statement issued Monday said: “Our forces in Europe continue to monitor the unfolding events in the Soviet Union and they have noted no change in the activities of the Soviet forces assigned to eastern Germany or Eastern Europe.”

Lawmakers condemned the takeover, but said that it is too early to tell whether events would force a major reconsideration of the 1992 defense budget, which goes before a House-Senate conference committee next month.

“The spending limits were driven by the (domestic) budget deficit, not what’s going on in the Soviet Union,” an aide to the House Armed Services Committee said. “There may be some shifting around within the top line but I wouldn’t expect major changes unless the situation deteriorates.”

Steven Koziak, a Pentagon budget analyst at the independent Defense Budget Project in Washington, said the coup could aid supporters of the controversial B-2 bomber and the Strategic Defense Initiative anti-missile program, two big systems designed to deter Soviet nuclear attack.

“Those who support the B-2 will use this as an indication that the Soviet threat has not gone away. Supporters of SDI will try to use this as well. One of the things people have been pointing to is you could have a situation in the Soviet Union in which control of Soviet nuclear weapons is no longer centralized and the risk of accidental or unauthorized launch may be perceived as higher. Those two programs in particular may benefit,” Koziak said.

Congress may also boost spending for electronic and satellite intelligence-gathering assets to monitor events in the Soviet Union, experts suggested.