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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken advocate of the latest proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP stated.

Early Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has gone from a uncertain position inside the administration to more firm standing.

Rubio was part of a US delegation that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of potential solutions for ending this war drawing from feedback from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

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

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is presented as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. It is derived from input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”