ABSTRACT
The implications of the Realist tradition for a concept of peace are associated with a victor and its norms, institutions, and perspectives of social, economic, and political systems. A victor’s peace has often been summarised as: “[t]hey make a desert and call it peace.” 1 It is also seen as a foil for the idealist and liberal hybrid version of peace that was partly being contested in the first ‘great debate.’ While idealist and liberal versions offered a positive epistemology of peace, realism offered a negative epistemology based upon survival as Wight argued, and a victor’s peace that Tacitus might have recognised. The resultant version of peace and its sustainability are dependent upon a victor’s hegemony:
[p]olitical theory and law…are the theory of the good life. International theory is the theory of survival. 2
