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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to sell the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a quick settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in office, international decisions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a vocal supporter of the recent plan, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key situation on the ground,” the VP stated.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the new ceasefire proposal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from restarting.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff 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 Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

But, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this conflict based on input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly 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 explain that the agreement was merely a initial proposal from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“Rubio did make a phone 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,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is offered as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is additionally based on earlier and current contributions from Ukraine.”