A MAJOR RESTRUCTURING of the U.S. presence abroad:

In the most sweeping realignment of American military power since World War II, the United States is planning to shift most of its forces from Germany, South Korea and the Japanese island of Okinawa, U.S. and foreign military officials say. The plans, still the focus of intense negotiations and debate among America’s allies and inside the Bush administration, would reorient America’s presence in Europe eastward to Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, and shift U.S. power in the Far East toward southeast Asia, with options for new bases in northern Australia, the Philippines and even Vietnam being explored.

The notion of Vietnamese negotiating the presence of American bases is deeply amusing, but overall it makes sense to rethink this sort of thing. The Cold War is over, the threat is different, and we probably don’t need bases as much as we used to.