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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to settle the conflict.

Before his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous first year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, 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 outspoken supporter of the latest plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the administration is working on either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled 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 endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

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

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials residing in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable standing.

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

However, his initial response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, securing a lasting peace will require each party to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of possible ideas for ending this war based on input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative 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 recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

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