US Army Secretary Thomas White said on Thursday he will fight any Pentagon move to cut his 480,000 troops but that some of the 65,000 army soldiers in Europe will likely be shifted to the Asia-Pacific region.
White said arms and equipment stored in Europe for an army combat brigade in case of war will be moved to Asia as part of a new Bush administration strategy. He said some troops would eventually also go but he was not specific.
"It's a signal once again that we are going to shift our available resources around" to fit the strategy, putting more emphasis on Asia, White said in an interview.
"Clearly if the Pacific becomes of greater importance than it has in the past relative to Europe and other regions of the world, you're going to re-examine the whole business. And we are doing that."
The proposal to move some combat weaponry and equipment from Europe to the Asia-Pacific region was welcomed yesterday by officials and analysts in Hawaii, Guam and Taiwan.
Japan and South Korea, which already host tens of thousands of US troops, did not immediately react. But they are unlikely to oppose it since they have long anticipated such shifts in America's global military strategy.
White's aides said some of the equipment may be stored on Diego Garcia, an island located in the Chagos archipelago, a British territory in the Indian Ocean that is 1,600km southwest of India.
White also said the US Army may consider basing troops on Guam, a US territory in the Pacific where the Air Force maintains a staging base for its aircraft.
The Army's top civilian official reacted coolly to reports that Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, was overseeing a Pentagon study of strategy and forces, might seek deep Army cuts in a major overhaul of the 1.4 million-member US military.
"I don't intend to cut force structure," White said, noting that Rumsfeld was letting the services make initial decisions on force size.
The Pentagon study is to be completed for Congress by the end of September.
The US currently has about 100,000 military personnel from all services stationed in Europe and another 100,000 in the Asia-Pacific region. The Army has 65,000 troops in Europe and 21,000 in South Korea and Japan.
The Army now has four combat brigades in Europe, with most of that force in Germany. Some of that strength is likely to be shifted to Asia and the Pacific rim, although White argued that the troops were currently well-deployed to move into troubled areas such as the Balkans and the Gulf region.
"If that [shift toward Asia] is what the president and the secretary decide to do, then we will have to deliberately engage NATO and our alliance partners both there and in the Pacific and consult with them as the changes are made," he said.
On Friday, Yang Chih-heng (楊志恆), a military expert with the private Taiwan Research Institute, said Taiwan would welcome any US move that would place the island under its shield of protection. By moving weapons and troops based in Europe, the US could deter further Chinese military expansion in the Pacific region without significantly increasing its defense expenditure, Yang said.
Hawaii also welcomed a move of US Army equipment from Europe to the region.
US Senator Daniel Inouye has long called for a greater security focus on Asia and the Pacific, noting such potential flashpoints as Indonesia, nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, China and Taiwan, and the Korean Peninsula.
"The secretary's remarks are right on target," said Inouye, chairman of the defense subcommittee of the US Appropriations Committee.
"When one looks at the trouble spots of this globe, you will find that there are more ... in the Asian sphere than the European," he said in an interview.
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