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America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His close ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic initial year in power, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“All criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the proposal than that expressed 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 firm footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation 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 acceptable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, securing a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to explain that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Moscow. However, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”