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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent effort to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his early attempts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's rocky initial visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a quick deal that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy decisions 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, diplomat Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some key situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early attempts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

But, the new peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict 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 living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with obtaining a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

But, his initial reaction to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an thorough discussion of serious and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable peace will necessitate both sides to consent to challenging but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a list of potential ideas for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

In private, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.

“Rubio did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was presented to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a strong framework for continuing discussions. It is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by earlier and current input from Ukraine.”