U.S. to realign military

The Kremlin was quick off the mark.

Within hours of Washington’s acknowledging in late November that it had begun formal negotiations to take over several Polish military bases, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov warned during a trip to Warsaw that any reconfiguration of the U.S. military presence in Europe must consider his country’s national-security interests.

“The Kremlin is not concealing from the Americans or the Poles its negative attitude toward Polish-American discussions about relocating bases in Germany,” a Russian official said.

But in the weeks to come, the Russians won’t be the only ones jittery about a long-studied repositioning of U.S. forces and bases. For different reasons, allies and rivals around the globe are exercised about the ambitious Bush administration plans to shift and reshuffle tens of thousands of American troops stationed worldwide.

The Polish talks are just the start of the biggest U.S. military realignment since the end of World War II.

With the war on terrorism in mind and the need to rethink overseas base locations in the light of U.S. military commitments in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pentagon planners have been working for months on what Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld calls a “readjustment to fit the 21st century.”

Last month, President Bush addressed the issue of a major realignment, saying: “The once-familiar threats facing our nation, our friends and our allies have given way to the less-predictable dangers associated with rogue nations, global terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. It remains for us to realign the global posture of our forces to better address these new challenges.”

Informal talks have been under way for weeks with old allies such as Japan, South Korea and Germany about a possible reduction of U.S. troops in their countries, and there have been negotiations, too, about establishing new bases in the former Eastern Bloc countries of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.

Last summer, Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy U.S. defense secretary, held talks in Bucharest on establishing U.S. bases in Romania. For the Germans and the South Koreans, planned troop and base reductions spell economic loss. There also are concerns in Seoul about any moves that would reduce the U.S. military commitment on the peninsula. Pentagon sources say changes being discussed include moving U.S. soldiers away from the Korean demilitarized zone.

Elsewhere in Asia, troops based in Japan could find themselves shifted to Australia. A healthy spinoff from that might be a reduction in hostility from residents toward the large presence of U.S. troops in Okinawa. And smaller bases are envisaged for several other countries in the region.

In the Balkans, sources say, the Pentagon is keen to build an air base at Camp Sarafovo in Bulgaria and to establish U.S. facilities at the air base of Mihail Kogalniceanu in Romania.

There also is a good chance that U.S. facilities at the Black Sea port of Constanta will be upgraded. So quickly is the Pentagon working that some troops serving in Iraq could learn that their home bases have shifted before their tours of duty are finished — among them the 1st Armored Division, which is scheduled to leave Iraq in January and return to Germany.

As far as Pentagon planners are concerned, the logistical problems they encountered deploying units such as the 1st Armored to Iraq confirm the need for repositioning U.S. forces based overseas. The Pentagon was frustrated in the run-up to the Iraq war with the time it took to move equipment for American armored divisions out of Germany and deliver it to the Persian Gulf.

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