Years ago, in the cold war era, most high ranking military were wary of chief of states, as of the next generation of generals, that didn't "survive" through a full scaled war...

Whether they be russians at Stalingrad or french at Dien Bien Phu or british in bombed London, those old guys "knew" in their guts what a war was about... And they thought (at least in France) that with the army getting more and more technical, some weird guy would one day think of it just as a "game" of power and economics...

They might have been right !

"What can I do, What can I write, Against the fall of Night". A.E. Housman