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294 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 11 / 2018 be in a position to achieve victory. And he adds that sea control is derived from other aspects, neither military, nor self-induced by geography. Nevertheless, Mahan has some words of reproach for societies that, having gone so far down the road of promoting commercialism, tend to forget about militarism. This, in his opinion, was not the case with Britain. However, with the exception of certain notable examples of individual heroism, in the case of the Dutch, the «commercial aristocracy» that led the country had considerable difficulty in taking on the challenges involved in the creation of a great power47. Therefore, for the political elite, society and soldiers to walk side by side, it is essential to feed back into military virtues, as it is for the political elite to share this logic. It is a debate deeply rooted in that Enlightenment that so influenced Mahan’s homeland since its birth as a state. Resonating there are the voices of Montesquieu48 and Rousseau, as endorsers of the eighteenth-century version of the republican virtú res-publicana —compatible, of course, with parliamentary monarchies— when they contrast the Athenian and the Spartan model49, opting for the latter, whose prescient symbol is the citizen-soldier, but also the communion of the habits and customs of society as a whole. Once again, Mahan’s dialectic is clear: without a commercial society and without the corresponding leadership of the political elite with the same objective, it is not possible to constitute an authentic naval power and, therefore, a military power worthy of that name. However, the ethos of the commercial elite generates externalities that must be assimilated and mitigated in order for the project to reach a successful conclusion... http://revista.ieee.es Political decision-making Mahan occasionally refers to «class of government»50 to indicate issues that in our days could easily be defined as drawing up public policies or even as decision-making —especially in delicate situations— which is, at the same time, another type of public 47  MAHAN, 2007, op. cit., pp. 156 y 165. 48  MONTESQUIEU, Barón de. El Espíritu de las leyes. Madrid: Tecnos, 19851735 p. 20. The French author is very critical of the bad influence exerted by love of luxury and ostentation. 49  ROUSSEAU, Jean-Jacques. El Contrato Social. Barcelona: Altaya, Barcelona, 1988 1762. He declares, setting forth his love of Spartan virtues... «If Sparta and Rome have perished, what state can hope to last forever?» (Idem: p. 87). For an extension of Rousseau’s approach to Sparta, see FORNIS, César. «Sparta as model and counter-model in the Enlightenment», in SANCHO, Laura (coord.). Antiquity as a paradigm. Mirages, myths and silences. Zaragoza: Prensas de la Universidad de Zaragoza, 2015, where it is indicated that «with Jean-Jacques Rousseau (...) Sparta is consolidated in modern thought as an immutable model of a virtuous and incorruptible society» (idem: p. 36). For his part, Mahan vindicates militarism as necessary for the protection of trade (MAHAN, 1897, op. cit., p. 64). 50  MAHAN, 2007, op. cit., p. 122.

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