Networking the Counterrevolution: The École Supérieure de Guerre, Transnational Military Collaboration, and Cold War Counterinsurgency, 1955–1975.

This article examines the role of the French Army's École Supérieure de Guerre (ESG) in Paris as a central institution for the global circulation of French counterrevolutionary warfare doctrines during the Cold War. It argues that the ESG not only taught counterinsurgency strategies developed in the Indochina and Algerian Wars but also fostered long-term professional and affective ties with foreign military officers, which facilitated the adoption of French doctrines in countries such as Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Brazil. The article highlights how French military influence was intertwined with broader processes of military professionalization and shared anticommunist anxieties, and how formal and informal networks—including military missions, attachés, and transnational ideological groups—contributed to the diffusion and legitimization of these doctrines. Ultimately, it situates the ESG and French military exchanges within a multipolar and transnational Cold War context, emphasizing the importance of military academies as key sites for the transmission and adaptation of counterinsurgency knowledge worldwide.