3. Vice President Mike Pence made an agreement with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

After hours of talks in Ankara, Mr. Pence announced that the Turkish military would pause operations in northern Syria for five days, to allow embattled Kurds to leave.

The arrangement is remarkably deferential to Turkey, with the U.S. accepting its territorial claims and dropping economic threats. Turkey’s foreign minister credited Mr. Erdogan and said, “We got what we wanted.”

Whether the deal will work is unclear, since most of the main actors in northern Syria — the Kurdish leadership and the Russian and Syrian governments — were not at the negotiating table.