🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the conflict.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a quick settlement that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in office, foreign policy actions in the White House are said to be influenced by a handful of Trump's key advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

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

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is working on either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views similar 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 government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from restarting.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Doubts

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm standing.

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

But, his initial response to the agreement was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated recently. “And, achieving a lasting peace will require each party to consent to challenging but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of possible ideas for ending this war drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to explain that the deal was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“Rubio made a call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a strong structure for continuing discussions. It is derived from feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”