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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous first year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help refine the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

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

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”