WAR & CIVILIZATION.

• Position: Review

WAR & CIVILIZATION BMG VIDEO, EIGHT CASSETTES, 400 MINUTES, $119.98

Narrator Walter Cronkite's opening statement sums it up succinctly: "In all of recorded history, man has never enjoyed a century without armed conflict. From the first recorded conflict right up to the present day, this series seeks to understand the history of warfare across the ages and asks the ultimate question: Can there be a future without war?" After watching almost seven hours of this series, our ultimate answer is a regretful "No." As the latest military action in Kosovo seems to reflect, man simply does not learn from the past.

Historian John Keegan, who appears intermittently throughout each segment to put events into historical perspective, explains that the origins of war lie in theft, while the history of empires is written in blood. Modern warfare is traced back to the Greek Hoplites 3,000 years ago and followed through the centuries to the Gulf War, tribal genocide in Rwanda, and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. The motivation for such insanity has shifted from theft to hatred, with the net result the stunning fact that 100,000,000...