The Evolution of Counterinsurgency Doctrine: The US Army Advisory Mission as a Learning Institution and the Role of Intelligence in the Greek Civil War, 1946-1949

The Greek Civil War is often studied as a historical event, but little attention is paid to it as a stage in the counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine development. The key point of this war is that it presented the foreign armies that assisted the Greek National Army, and especially the US Army which was at the time forming its own post-war COIN doctrine, with the opportunity to apply for the first time traditional and new tactics against the Greek communist guerrillas and learn valuable lessons in terms of COIN doctrine development. Therefore, this thesis examines the impact of the Greek Civil War on US Army COIN doctrine development by addressing two never studied before aspects of this war. Firstly, the way the US Army advisory group performed as a learning institution. Secondly, what lessons from the experience in Greece were transferred to the under-formation post war US Army COIN doctrine. This impact can be traced in the early post-war US Army COIN doctrine, given that during the period of writing its manual, the US Army was already in Greece on an advisory mission that could be a source of valuable lessons. Toward this end, this thesis argues that the US Army advisory mission displayed the necessary intellectual curiosity and the healthy skepticism that allowed the adaptation to change, while several tactical and strategic lessons were learned during the Greek Civil War and transferred to the US Army COIN doctrine. Nevertheless, the essence of the impact lays in the empirical experience that validated during the Greek Civil War those COIN principles that eventually reached the US Army manual.