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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by failed negotiators or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with securing a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a notably more full-throated support of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of possible solutions for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“Rubio made a call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”