A few weeks ago, I published here in Al-Monitor a long talk I had with a colonel who had just been discharged from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). During that talk, the officer, who wished to remain anonymous, dismissed all the age-old conventions held by a consensus of the Israeli defense establishment over more than a generation.

There's no need, he said, for so many tanks; there's no need, he asserted, to have so many planes; the Israeli defense doctrine should be changed and revamped to meet the events in the Arab world in general and the challenges of the future battlefields in particular.

As noted, several weeks have passed since that talk, and now, July 11, Israel's Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz has published with much fanfare his dramatic plan for an IDF facelift.  What emerges from this plan is that Israel intends to let go of a considerable percentage of its ground forces, hundreds of tanks, dozens of fighter jets and thousands of career personnel. Israel has come to the realization that the chances of facing off against large tank-based armies in the future are nearly nil. Such armies are becoming a thing of the past as are the countries that maintained, trained and funded them.

Until two years ago, Syria was a stable nation-state with a large tank-based regular army. That Syria is gone. Egypt was a stable nation-state with a huge, modern, trained army equipped with cutting-edge Western weaponry systems. The military is still there, but it's the country that's wavering. Today's Egypt is the "sick man on the Nile," embroiled in endless chaos. Bankrupt, it needs the funding and handouts from the Gulf states (until the United States decides whether or not there was a military coup there). Lebanon is torn asunder. Jordan is faltering.