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America's Secretary of the Army, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong relationship with Vice President Vance has positioned a close associate of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial attempts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.

His strong ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous first trip to the 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 local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“All criticism of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and European Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions similar 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 deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a peace framework that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House 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 moderate the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.

But, his first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote recently. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate each party to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a set of possible ideas for resolving this war based on input from each party of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a initial offer from the Russians and not an plan pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is presented as a solid framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”