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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

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

After a chaotic first year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

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

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily 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 Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a notably more full-throated support of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a uncertain position inside the White House to more stable footing.

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

However, his initial response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “And, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of potential solutions for ending this conflict based on input from each party of this war.”

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

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”