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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest initiative to end the conflict in Ukraine. His strong connection with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent push to conclude the war.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to resolve the Ukraine war.

The VP's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial trip to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting demands from the US to accept a swift deal that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are said to be shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing advisor Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, State Department head Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

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

“Every criticism of the ceasefire plan the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some key reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Initial Efforts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to restore relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and right-leaning views similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been criticized for endorsing a ceasefire plan that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.

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

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed negotiators or politicians residing in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who continued on the presentation of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his team with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

That was a distinctly more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the government who has transitioned from a shaky position inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US team that traveled to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help refine the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

But, his initial response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will require each party to consent to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for ending this conflict based on feedback from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, 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 called legislators to clarify that the deal was merely a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I believe he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a offer that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. It is derived from feedback from the Russian side. However, it is also based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”