🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the Trump administration latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Euroskeptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early attempts to promote the deal to officials in Europe were described as chaotic.

His close ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

It was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first visit to the White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again resisting pressure from the US to accept a quick deal that Ukrainian leaders have described as a surrender.

After a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course 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 Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every criticism of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the proposal or misrepresents some key reality on the ground,” Vance stated.

Initial Attempts and EU Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian counterparts. European officials, in turn, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he accused them of running from their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the recently published peace deal mirrored his positions, and he has been one of the most assertive advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.

In posts this weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to produce a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire will not be made by unsuccessful diplomats or politicians living in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the top diplomat and national security adviser, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner 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 delegation that went to Geneva this weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders to help moderate the initial 28-point peace plan in order to make it more palatable to leaders in Kyiv.

However, his initial reaction to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a durable ceasefire will require both sides to consent to difficult but necessary concessions. This is the reason we are and will persist to create a set of potential solutions for resolving this war drawing from input from both sides of this war.”

In private, he was reportedly much more skeptical of the proposal. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to explain that the agreement was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

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

Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “It is offered as a solid structure for continuing discussions. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Moscow. However, it is additionally informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”