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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, emerged as an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong connection with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the forefront of Donald Trump latest effort to conclude the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and shares a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

This was Vance who stepped in during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to agree to a swift settlement that local officials have described as a capitulation.

After a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, such as top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, meanwhile, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published ceasefire proposal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by smart people living in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly tasked his staff with obtaining a agreement on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm footing.

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

However, his first reaction to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a durable peace will require each party to agree to difficult but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will persist to develop a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from each party of this war.”

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

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document 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 stated. “The framework is offered as a solid structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Russian side. However, it is also based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”