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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His strong ties with Vance, who he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's key 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 advocate of the recent proposal, which was crafted 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 working on either misunderstands the framework or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and stop the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It might be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with securing a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That 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 transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this war based on input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a phone 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 fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”