A mighty show of force from U.S. fleets abroad

YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — It’s an exercise not quite like any Rear Adm. James Kelly has led his battle group into before.

In the coming weeks, the USS Kitty Hawk and six other Navy aircraft carriers will be deployed around the globe to demonstrate America’s ability to deal with a decidedly post-September 11 scenario: the outbreak of violence just about everywhere at once.

For security reasons, Adm. Kelly won’t discuss specifics of the Kitty Hawk’s role in the “Summer Pulse ‘04” exercises, which will include maneuvers with allies from every part of the world. But he can say one thing: It reflects a major change in the way the U.S. military is looking at the world these days.

American forces are undergoing their biggest shake-up since the Cold War as a re-examination in the Pentagon of overseas troop deployments has opened up a discussion of major realignments and force reductions.

“Since 9/11, the mind-set is totally different,” Adm. Kelly said in his quarters on the Kitty Hawk, the Navy’s only carrier with a home port outside the United States. “We need to deploy, we need to live overseas, we need to be engaged. We can’t just stay at home and tuck our tails in and hide.”

For the hundreds of thousands of U.S. soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen “forward deployed” overseas, that business is changing fast. Major cuts have already been announced for Germany and South Korea, and senior U.S. military officials say there is more change ahead.

“Our force posture and footprint is essentially unchanged over the last 50 years,” Adm. Thomas B. Fargo, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said during a recent swing through Southeast Asia. “You are going to see a fair amount of change over the next few years.”

For decades, as it dug in to deter the Soviet Union, the United States focused its deployments abroad on a formula involving roughly 100,000 military personnel in Europe and another 100,000 in Asia. But the stress from the demands of keeping 138,000 soldiers in Iraq and 20,000 more in Afghanistan, along with waging the overall war on terrorism, has forced planners to dip deep into those “set-piece” deployments:

• Defense Undersecretary Douglas J. Feith announced on June 8 that the Pentagon would withdraw its two Army divisions from Germany and replace them with fewer, more mobile troops. He did not say how large a net reduction was planned. The Army now has 40,000 soldiers in Germany.

• Washington told South Korea in May that it planned to move 3,600 soldiers from bases there to Iraq soon, and withdraw 12,500 of the total 37,500 Americans by the end of next year.

• In Japan, where roughly 50,000 U.S. military personnel and the U.S. Seventh Fleet are based, rumors have been rife of a relocation or reduction in the nearly 20,000 Marines based on the southern island of Okinawa, several thousand of whom were sent to Iraq in January. Officials say no decision has been made, but acknowledge wide-ranging talks are under way.

“We are looking at a number of potential force-structure changes within the Pacific-Asia theater,” said Lt. Gen. Thomas Waskow, commander of U.S. forces in Japan.

“We are aggressive in our efforts to transform our forces into a leaner, more agile force capable of anticipating and responding to rogue threats or providing humanitarian relief on demand.”

Officials acknowledge the changes have alarmed some allies, who fear withdrawals may leave them more vulnerable. Japan and South Korea, in particular, have sought reassurance that their security will not be compromised. Both rely heavily on the United States for their defense.

“We are going to make no changes in the U.S. force posture that would be to the detriment of any of our friends and allies,” Gen. Waskow said.

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