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The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.

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

His close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a capitulation.

Following a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing 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 developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative views 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 forceful advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It might be made by intelligent 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 primarily instructed his staff with securing a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote recently. “Furthermore, achieving a durable 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 resolving this war drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly 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 lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal 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 receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later stated. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on earlier and current input from Ukraine.”