Standing on a stage swathed with flags, Donald Trump outlined his strategy for America’s continuing role in Afghanistan in a dramatic prime-time speech Monday night. Following months of deliberations with advisers, which culminated in a meeting with his war cabinet at Camp David, Trump’s speech confirmed that, despite his prior skepticism, the U.S. would be deepening its engagement in the already 16-year conflict. He did not, however, offer explicit details as to how. “We will not talk about numbers of troops or our plans for further military activities. Conditions on the ground, not arbitrary timetables, will guide our strategy,” Trump declared before thousands of troops at Fort Myer, confusing vagueness with vagary. “America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out. I will not say when we are going to attack, but attack we will.”

Trump structured his speech around three insights, which he apparently received after studying Afghanistan in great detail. “First our nation must seek an honorable and enduring outcome worthy of the tremendous sacrifices that have been made; second, the consequences of a rapid exit are both predictable and unacceptable. . . . Third, and finally, I concluded that the security threats we face in Afghanistan and the broader region are immense.”

He was careful to acknowledge that his studious conclusions veered from the America First rhetoric that he espoused during his presidential campaign. But he attributed his shift in stance to the necessary gravity demanded of the presidency, of which he had heard rumors back when he was a private citizen. “My original instinct was to pull out, and historically I like following my instincts,” he said. “But all my life, I’ve heard that decisions are much different when you sit behind the desk in the Oval Office.”

Trump’s Oval Office epiphany seems to have landed him at the same juncture that proved impassable for George W. Bush and Barack Obama, both of whom failed to conclude the U.S.’s longest-running conflict, which has claimed more than 100,000 lives and cost more than $841 billion. But, ever-keen to detangle himself from Obama’s legacy, Trump portrayed his strategy as a stark break with his predecessor. While Obama set arbitrary timetables for American involvement in Afghanistan, Trump’s strategy will be entirely open-ended, with withdrawal based on meeting certain undefined conditions in the region, including a future political solution. Part of this plan will involve deploying additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan to help train local forces, with the goal of pressuring the Taliban to move from the battlefield to the negotiating table. Trump also said that the U.S. would put new pressures on Pakistan to crack down on the terrorist sanctuaries that line its border with Afghanistan. He neglected to mention that these are objectives that previous administrations pursued for years.

No doubt aware that the distinctions between his strategy and those pursued by his predecessors are tenuous, Trump strove to mark a rhetoric break. Recommitting to Afghanistan was a political risk for Trump, who campaigned for the White House by promising to extricate the U.S. from overseas entanglements. His speech was thus an opportunity to shield himself from the implications of turning on his heel, and issue an appeal to a core base of voters who, like himself, might be suspicious of foreign intervention, but are simultaneously keen to crack down on evildoers. “We will no longer use American military might to construct democracies in faraway lands, or try to rebuild other countries in our own image. . . . We are not nation-building again. We are killing terrorists,” Trump said, promising to loosen restrictions on American soldiers to hunt down Islamic extremists, whom he dubbed “thugs, criminals, and predators, and—that’s right—losers.”

It is unclear whether Trump himself understood that he offered nothing new, besides the promise of potentially endless war. Still, the televised address was a well-timed opportunity. It offered the president the chance to use international policy as a means to speak directly to Americans who, across the political spectrum, are reeling in the wake of Charlottesville and desperate for the appearance of more serious leadership. If Trump failed to outline a cohesive strategy for Afghanistan on Monday, he did grasp another, more familiar strategy: trying to win over voters.