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REVISTA IEEE 11

297 Josep Baqués Quesada Fundamental lessons in the work of Mahan: from… least in its spirit, with some of the positions adopted at times by the current president of the United States, with whom his predecessor would share an ideological DNA, and similar concerns regarding competitors capable of offering the same services at better prices, against a background of rivalry between the major powers for hegemonic positions. Interestingly, among the great supporters of the Navigation Act we also find... Adam Smith! In fact, at the end of the eighteenth century, the Scot —and great British patriot to boot— defended the relevance of the old ruling, with criteria similar to those put forward by Mahan: once again, the economy should be placed at the service of the national interest —of national defence, he says— and not vice versa60, despite the fact in the short term such policies could be counterproductive in terms of competitiveness. Hence the quotation that I selected as a title for this article: a true reflection of Mahan’s deepest theories, in tune with the non-incompatibility (or even the indispensable synergy) of a commercial mentality and the promotion of national defence. http://revista.ieee.es CONCLUSIONS Mahan starts from an objective reality that is confirmed with the passage of time, namely, that most of the world trade takes place at sea. Bearing in mind the improbability of a state being self-sufficient in everything necessary to sustain its population and industry, the nations that aspire to the status of world power must seek to control these routes, either to guarantee access to the sources of energy and raw materials that they lack, or to deny that option to their adversaries. This proposition is backed up by various reflections of the author at strategic, operational and tactical levels. Some are still useful, while others are obsolete, given that Mahan refers above all to deployments and combats typical of the time of sailing ships, (despite already living in the dawn of the era of the great battleships and being one of their endorsers). He has even commented on the inconvenience of taking at face value his teachings in the operational and tactical fields61. Now, as some analysts admit, «Mahan did not seem to care whether his students were able to accurately memorise the smallest details of the Battle of Trafalgar. What seems to him nevertheless transcendental is that they knew why the United Kingdom won the war and the others lost it»62. It probably interested him that his naval academy students were capable of making the connection between his ongoing work and the concept of national interest, the 60  SMITH, Adam. La Riqueza de las Naciones. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 19941776, pp. 557-558. 61  HAWA, Samy. 2012, op. cit., pp. 364-365. 62  GÓNZALEZ, Andrés, and AZNAR, Federico, 2013, op. cit., p. 339.

REVISTA IEEE 11
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