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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has positioned a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to conclude the war.

Before his recent trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his early efforts to sell the deal to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

His strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the isolationist VP in talks to end the Ukraine war.

Vance's Role in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first trip to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Now, Ukraine is again resisting pressure from the US to agree to a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a small group of Trump's top advisers, such as chief of staff 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 latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misrepresents some critical reality on the ground,” Vance wrote.

Early Attempts and EU Reactions

Vance's early efforts at hammering out a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while also attempting to renew relations with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were irritated by his early remarks, in which he accused them of running from their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting 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 produce a truce that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to both sides, and stop the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by failed negotiators or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who continued on the introduction of the ceasefire proposal in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Doubts

That was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the government who has gone from a shaky stature inside the administration to more stable footing.

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

However, his first response to the agreement was tepid:

“Ending a complicated and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of serious and realistic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a durable peace will require both sides to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will persist to create a list of possible solutions for resolving this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this afternoon and I think he emphasized to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a strong framework for ongoing negotiations. It is based on feedback from the Russian side. However, it is additionally based on earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”