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America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely envoy for the White House's newest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close connection with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the conflict.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close ties with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine war.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Efforts

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in power, international decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the recent proposal, 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 administration is working on either misunderstands the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new 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 endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the conflict from resuming.

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

It was Vance who continued on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the plan than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more firm standing.

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

But, his initial response to the agreement was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and realistic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a durable peace will necessitate each party to agree to challenging but essential compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this conflict.”

In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the deal was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a strong structure for continuing discussions. It is based on feedback from the Moscow. However, it is also based on previous and current input from Ukraine.”