President George W. Bush is expected to announce today the withdrawal of about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia.
Mr Bush is to speak in Ohio, one of the November election battleground states, to the Veterans of Foreign Wars to outline a major realignment of the US military presence prompted by the end of the Cold War, US officials said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the changes will take years to put in place and did not expect large troop movements soon. But the realignment will likely mean more US troops on home soil - at a time when critics say the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts have stretched US forces.
US officials said the changes will mean the withdrawal of about 70,000 troops from Europe and Asia, two regions where the United States has maintained a major presence since the end of the Second World War in 1945.
In the Cold War era, the European forces, especially in Germany, were meant to be a counterweight to the threat posed by the Soviet Union's Warsaw Pact forces.
The proposed global realignment includes plans to use bases in eastern European countries of the former Soviet bloc as transit points to quickly send forces from the United States to trouble spots such as the Middle East and northern Africa.
There are more than 100,000 US troops in Europe, with 70,000 in Germany, and another 100,000 in the Pacific and Asia.