“We learned that when America retreats, chaos often follows,” Pompeo observed in the chaotic wake of his boss’s abrupt decision to withdraw American troops from Syria. But in wiping out the Islamic State’s caliphate in Syria and Iraq, exiting the Iran nuclear deal, and twice retaliating against Bashar al-Assad’s use of chemical weapons, he contended, the Trump administration is reasserting the United States’ “traditional role as a force for good” in the region.

Strikingly, however, observers on both ends of the U.S. foreign-policy spectrum saw parallels in Obama’s and Trump’s views on the hard limits to expending American blood and treasure in the Middle East. As Obama’s former Mideast adviser Philip Gordon told me, Trump in a sense represents not “a repudiation of Obama” but a “doubling down of Obama.” Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a supporter of the Trump administration’s hard-line Iran policies, similarly characterized Trump as “Obama 2.0” in wanting to disengage militarily from the Middle East, though he cited as an exception Trump’s views on Iran.

Pompeo delivered his message of reassurance to Israel and the United States’ Arab partners in damage-control mode during a nine-nation tour of the Middle East. Just a few weeks ago, his boss blindsided those allies by announcing plans to yank troops out of Syria and leave others to mop up what remains of the Islamic State there, noting that the Iranians could “do what they want” in the country and that it was time for the United States to terminate its “Endless Wars” and “come home & rebuild.” Pompeo and National-Security Adviser John Bolton have since fuzzed up the timeline and the conditions under which U.S. forces will leave Syria, but leave they will, assuming the president has his way.

In another sign that the president isn’t exactly preoccupied with reasserting the United States’ “traditional role” in the Middle East, there is no U.S. ambassador in more than half of the countries Pompeo is visiting on this trip, including Egypt.

Read: Secretary of a state of confusion

And there were still other indications: As Pompeo spoke, the president headed to Texas as part of his bid to wall off the southern border through a government shutdown. While some State Department officials helping Pompeo with his travels worked without pay, Trump was venting that he could finance the barrier with a fraction of what the United States spends on the war in Afghanistan (where he’s signaled that the next major U.S. military pullout could soon occur).

Trump is embracing the idea “that we can build a wall around the United States and we can keep out all of these threats, whether they come in the form of immigrants or they come in the form of terrorists,” Dubowitz told me. Meanwhile, his secretary of state is off in the Middle East telling allies, “The United States is not retreating behind walls, but in fact we’re going to be deeply engaged in the region and in the world.”