Second, Trump returned to the theme that a sustainable approach to countering terrorism demands defeating terrorists’ underlying ideology, emphasizing the importance of “exposing the false allure of their evil ideology.” The Trump team continues to herald the idea of taking on terrorist ideology as something new, when in fact it has been a key—if challenging—facet of counterterrorism since 9/11, across two previous administrations. And, even as the Trump administration pays lip service to the ideological dimension of this struggle, it is demolishing the very structures it inherited, designed to tackle this challenge.

Those structures include the domestically focused Countering Violent Extremism Task Force and the overseas-oriented Global Engagement Center, both of which have suffered critical leadership losses over the past few weeks. As if forcing out top talent isn’t bad enough, the Trump administration has deliberately and inexplicably spurned funding already allocated specifically for the ideological dimensions of counterterrorism. So, here too, Trump’s speech revealed a president keen to hit the tired old themes of the campaign trail while practicing precisely the opposite of what he preached—in this case, dismantling the very tools capable of delivering on those themes.

Third, Trump insisted—again echoing his unrelenting rhetoric as a candidate—that, whatever he would do, it would be different from what Obama had done before him. Trump’s language asserted change at every step, as he doggedly pointed to “details of our new strategy,” “[a] core pillar of our new strategy,” “[a]nother fundamental pillar of our new strategy,” “the next pillar of our new strategy,” and the need for foreign “partners to support our new strategy” (all emphasis mine).

This is a Trump hallmark on national-security policy, and one I’ve emphasized before: the insistence that Trump’s policy represents a wholesale rejection of Obama’s. It’s a trope that Trump perfected on the campaign trail. But, as in other contexts, it suffered in his Afghanistan speech from its utter disconnect from reality.

What Trump insisted was “new” about his approach to Afghanistan—“the integration of all instruments of American power—diplomatic, economic, and military—toward a successful outcome”; the refusal to “be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations, the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat”; and so on—could be ripped from the pages of Obama-era strategy documents. Indeed, not only does the blatant conceptual continuity belie any claim to novelty, but the unanswered question of how again undercuts Trump’s claim to be able to deliver on these elements of his approach. How, for example, does he intend to integrate all instruments of American power when he also appears personally responsible for shattering any attempt by his team to produce a coordinated, interagency approach to foreign policy? Likewise, how does Trump intend to generate new leverage vis-à-vis Pakistan to demand greater counterterrorism cooperation, when he is reported to have unabashedly gushed in his first post-Election Day call with Pakistan’s prime minister about his “amazing work which is visible in every way”?