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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump latest push to settle the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as 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 VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky initial trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated support of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict based on feedback from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the deal was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is offered as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on input from the Russian side. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”