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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's latest effort to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken 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 ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people living 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 instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a call to us this afternoon and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”