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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his early efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, indicate the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Attempts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he accused them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views close to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In social media updates this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “An agreement could be made by smart people operating in the actual situation.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the top diplomat and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the government who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the original 28-point peace plan in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his first reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated recently. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for ending this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “It is offered as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”