Page 290

REVISTA IEEE 11

290 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 11 / 2018 ships (also on warships) as well as easily employable in ports or shipyards, and even in other tasks related to the naval, civil or military industry, today we would speak in terms of adequate social capital for R&D27. A society with these credentials, aware of the importance of ensuring these activities, these trade flows with their routes, and these jobs, is a society that will ask the state to make the relevant (including budgetary) efforts to equip itself with a powerful navy. On the other hand, a society that turns its back to the sea will see how such an initiative will languish and fade away. In such instances, although the state may reinforce other dimensions of the war by proposing zero-sum games (a very frequent question everywhere), it will have irreversibly short-circuited the mechanisms that in other circumstances would allow it to maintain the medium and long-term war effort (also in the interest of the army’s ground forces). http://revista.ieee.es National character Under the heading «national character» Alfred Mahan alludes to a political project that includes a mental willingness on the part of its rulers. But he raises it in this way, alluding to the concept of national character, because he is aware that there can be no split between the people and elites. So we have here his particular version of the Clausewitz trinity. As we will see, this synergy (or its absence) is also transferred to the military institution28. Probably, this is the Gordian knot of his argument. Because Mahan understands that you can only build and sustain a long-term naval power when squarely backed by a commercial mentality. The word commercial is in this case capitalist (although it is not the word used for it) and is opposed to mercantilist29. In terms of concepts, it is feasible to begin the task of building a strong economic power based on other standards (if Mahan were alive, he would also allude in a critical sense —and, if possible, with greater vehemence— to what we call «real socialism»). The problem is that these alternatives are evanescent. This can be explained by the fact that trade is the basis of the need to develop an armed wing on the high seas, but also the stimulus that energises the economy and reproduces in the long term the conditions to sustain that effort. Without a business model, the momentum to maintain that armed wing would be much weaker. Mahan sets forth his most compelling arguments: the states which developed economic models that we would today define as resource-based were neglecting 27  PARKER, Ronald D. Mahan for the Twenty First Century. Quantico: Marine Corps University, 2003, p. 19. Parker points out that, despite the current demographic weakness of the US with respect to China or India, the sociological aspects would have been taken care of in the last decades (much more than they were during the lifetime of Mahan, who always wanted further progress on this issue), thus palliating the population differential (idem: 20 y 30). 28  See, infra (at the end of the same heading) the case of France, a good example of a sensu contrario. 29  BRADFORD, James C. Admirals of the New Steel Navy: Makers of the American Naval Tradition, 1880-1930. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2013, p. 57.

REVISTA IEEE 11
To see the actual publication please follow the link above