Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley “has similarly been in communication with his counterpart” in Turkey’s military, Esper added. One of Milley’s calls took place on Friday.

“That remains our message: Stop, let’s go back to the status quo” and rebuild the jointly patrolled safe zone along a 125-kilometer stretch of border that the Turks are now shelling, Esper said.

The calls come as Turkey continues to launch artillery and airstrikes across the border into a region of Syria that — until this week — was part of a “safe zone” patrolled jointly by U.S. and Turkish forces. President Donald Trump ordered the withdrawal of fewer than 50 U.S. troops manning two observation posts in the safe zone after a Sunday phone call with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“We relocated a small contingent of less than 50 special operations soldiers out of the immediate zone of attack,” Esper explained. He added that the overall U.S. troop level in Syria, which the Pentagon has put at 1,000, has not changed and U.S. troops remain partnered with the Syrian Kurdish forces in other parts of their territory. That’s despite Trump’s false claim on Thursday that “we have no soldiers in Syria.”

Esper and Milley gave little sign that they expected the calls to work. “I just got off the phone just shortly ago with my counterpart, multiple calls over the last several days, and I’m not seeing any indications or warnings of planned stoppage,” Milley said. And in his calls with Akar, Esper said he had heard “no indication yet that they are willing to stop.”

So far, though, few Turkish ground troops have crossed the border into the 125-kilometer-long zone that the U.S. special operations teams evacuated, Milley said. The chairman put the numbers of Turkish light infantry troops that entered Syria “in the hundreds” along with “maybe up to a thousand” Turkish-backed Syrian Arab proxy forces.

Artillery, manned aircraft, drones and tanks are all firing across the border, Milley said, but “the incursion on the ground is relatively limited” so far.

That means the Pentagon is still trying to head the Turks off before the point of no return. Esper’s and Milley’s calls appear to be Plan A.

Once Turkish ground troops cross the border in large numbers, the Pentagon’s options will be much more limited, according to current and former military officers with recent experience in the region.

“CENTCOM is reeling. They’re working around the clock but there’s not a lot they can do,” a former senior special operations officer who led troops in the region said of Central Command, the military headquarters responsible for the Middle East. “They’re churning out courses of action to mitigate the effects of this, but with the [Turkish] offensive already underway, they’re way behind the power curve.”

Referring to the possibility of using the U.S. military to protect the Syrian Kurds against the Turks, the same officer was pessimistic. “Are you just going to use air support? The only way to really establish a safe zone is to have troops on the ground, and that’s gone, that’s a fait accompli,” he said.

U.S. troops always have the right to defend themselves, Esper and Milley emphasized on Friday. But there is no authority “that I’m aware of that allows us to conduct military operations in support of the Kurds against the Turks, a 70-year NATO ally,” Milley said when asked whether U.S. aircraft would respond to requests from the Syrian Kurds for protection.

“I will not place American service members in the middle of a longstanding conflict between the Turks and the Kurds,” Esper added. That “is not why we are in Syria.”

