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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump recent push to settle the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by smart people operating 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 instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential solutions for ending this war drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed 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 recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid structure for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”