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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

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

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, 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 strong structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by earlier and current input from Ukraine.”