George W. Bush

Cincinnati, Aug. 17 (Reuters): President George W. Bush yesterday announced plans to bring home up to 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia within a decade in a major realignment that Democrats said was politically motivated in an election year.

“The world has changed a great deal and our posture must change with it,” Bush said of his plan for one of the biggest shifts of US forces at many of 5,458 military facilities worldwide since the Cold War.

Bush said his goal was to ease the burden on US troops, but the plan offered no immediate relief to more than 140,000 American troops facing extended deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars in the political battleground state of Ohio, Bush said more troops would eventually be stationed in the US, and those remaining overseas would have more combat power to “surge quickly to deal with unexpected threats.”

At the Pentagon, defence officials said a “significant portion” of the 60,000 to 70,000 troops and 100,000 family members and civilian personnel in question would come out of Europe, including about 30,000 troops in two heavy divisions in Germany.

They said moves would not begin until at least 2006 after decisions are made on new domestic base closings, and that a brigade of Army Stryker armoured vehicles with 5,000 troops would be deployed to Germany as part of the US shift away from ponderous forces toward mobility.

The US now has about 115,000 troops stationed in Europe and another 97,000 in the Asia-Pacific region. A senior state department official said troop reductions in Asia would be “not very dramatic” but gave no details.