51. Then and Now: Using the Past to Secure the Future with W02 Paul Barnes

Paul Barnes is a serving Warrant Officer in the British Army, employed as a Doctrine Writer at the Land Warfare Centre. He is uniquely a Chief of the Air Staff’s Fellow, a Chief of the General Staff’s Fellow, and a former MWI fellow at West Point in 2021.
In today’s interview, Warrant Officer Class 2 Paul Barnes, British Army, discusses his article Learning the Wrong Lessons:  Biases, the Rejection of History, and Single-Issue Zealotry in Modern Military Thought, featured by our colleagues at Modern War Institute; learning from historical conflicts; and fighting against “neophilia” and “presentism”.  The following bullet points highlight key insights from our interview:

In the aforementioned article, Paul Barnes discusses the dangers of “presentism,” in which current events are catastrophized and used to inform the future without adequate acknowledgement of historical context. This mindset creates two dangerous fallacies:  1) that the world is more dangerous than it has been before; and 2) that technology is developing more rapidly than ever before.These statements are both false and promote the idea that history cannot help us understand our operational environment. 


The misconceptions promoted by presentism are generally accepted due to a lack of contextual historical understanding.However, militaries also promote the ideas of presentism to secure greater budget allocations. Analysts, too, use presentism to promote the legitimacy of their ideas and engagement with their work. 


Leveraging historical context to avoid the bias of presentism can be challenging. Even information from on-the-ground analysts throughout history will include bias. Multiple perspectives from history should be recognized, thus creating the opportunity to ‘learn from committee’ and avoid the pitfalls of biased reporting. 


The age of the tank is not over, as seen in the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Modern and future warfare will continue to leverage a combination ofinformation operations and heavy combined arms maneuver. 


To avoid presentism, enhanced education on critical thinking,bias recognition, and military history should be incorporated in professional military education for both Soldiers and Leaders.The latter is especially important, as an understanding of the past helps provide context for comprehending the present.  While we can “