President-elect Donald Trump vowed Tuesday night to strengthen the U.S. military but limit its use, suggesting a pullback from areas like the Middle East where the country has spent decades trying to broker a peace between warring interests.

“We’ve spent at last count $6 trillion in the Middle East and our roads have potholes all over, our highways are falling apart, our bridges are falling, our tunnels are no good, our airports are horrible,” Trump said at a victory rally in Fayetteville, N.C. “We’ve got to start spending on ourselves.”

Invoking his “America First” policy, Trump pledged “to only engage the use of military forces when it’s in the vital national interests of the United States.”

“We don’t want to have a depleted military, fighting all over the place,” Trump said.

At the same time, he vowed to boost defense spending by ending the automatic cuts required under the congressional budget-trimming process known as sequestration.

The notion, he suggested, is to build a military so strong it will ward off any threats. “Peace through strength,” he called it, echoing the phrase President Ronald Reagan used during a massive military buildup during his two terms in office.

Trump appeared in Fayetteville, near the sprawling Fort Bragg military base, as part of his “Thank You America” tour — a swing through states he carried in November. His first stop last week was in Ohio; the tour continues later this week in Iowa and Michigan.

In a half-hour speech long on superlatives but short on specifics, Trump also promised to repeal and replace Obamacare with a cheaper and more responsive health care system; to vastly improve the care of the nation’s veterans; and to vigorously preserve and protect American jobs from being shipped overseas.

“We will defend American jobs,” he promised. “We have to look at it almost like a war.”