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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the war.

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

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

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous first year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a small group of Trump's key aides, such as chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team 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 said held anti-immigration and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the new peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople 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 extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the war from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by failed negotiators or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his staff with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain stature inside the administration to more firm footing.

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

But, his first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to consent to challenging but necessary concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for ending this war drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make 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 suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. However, it is also based on previous and current contributions from Ukraine.”