A Lithuanian soldier provides security for American Civil Affairs Soldiers during a market assessment in Dujayli, Iraq, July 9, 2008.
Photographer: Sgt. Daniel West,
Multi-National Division-Central.

The Pentagon is steering more money toward Eastern European allies fighting in Afghanistan even as it prepares further reductions of U.S. forces in nations to the west such as Germany.

The U.S. plans to spend as much as $100 million, 33 percent more than last year, to provide training and equipment to countries helping conduct special operations missions and training for Afghan forces fighting the Taliban, according to Pentagon figures released today.

The biggest increases are going to Hungary, Poland, Romania and Lithuania, which have made outsize contributions of troops to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led coalition in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon is relying more on Eastern European allies, most of them in NATO, as traditional alliance members such as the U.K., the Netherlands and Germany cut their own defense budgets. Western European allies also are looking to reduce their forces in Afghanistan in proportion to the Pentagon’s withdrawal of about a third of its forces by September.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said last week that the U.S. will halve the number of conventional brigades in Europe as it cuts $490 billion over the next decade and turns more attention to Asia.

The planned cut to two brigades will remove 6,000 to 10,000 troops, most of them in Western Europe. The U.S. had almost 80,000 military personnel stationed in Europe as of December 2010, more than 54,000 of them in Germany, according to the Defense Department’s website.

The Pentagon plans to compensate for the reductions by rotating more troops into the region and conducting additional joint training and exercises.