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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Before his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

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

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians residing in a dream world,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

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

Rubio's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require both sides to agree to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary made a call to us this day and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. It is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”