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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Ceasefire Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first trip to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting peace will necessitate each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of possible ideas for resolving this war based on feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a solid structure for ongoing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”