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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for ending this war drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the White House.

“Rubio made a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”