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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, who he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a quick settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by failed negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable footing.

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

But, his initial response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful 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 deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”