Yet most of them are also at peace and long to keep it so. Therein lies the key to the difference between peace research and strategic studies. As a general rule, strategic studies is infused with realist assumptions. International politics is seen as a struggle for power. The primary actors in world affairs are autonomous states engaged in power-maximizing behavior.
National security is the ultimate and overriding goal, and force is the principal instrument.
In such a realist paradigm, violence is seen as endemic, inevitable and an instrument of conflict resolution. The task of strategic analysts is to predict courses of action that will enable states to maximize their own power while neutralizing or minimizing the national power of opponents so that the conflict is resolved on one's own terms and not that of the enemy. Peace research changes focus from the welfare of the state to that of individuals and the world community. Few peace researchers would dispute this. But most would point to the injustice and inequity of the Treaty of Versailles, and the subsequent treatment of Germany from within the realist paradigm, as having spawned Hitler in the first place.