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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the war.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy decisions 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 crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine 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 complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will require each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this conflict based on feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal 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 align himself. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”