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America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to end the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of President Trump's latest push to settle the conflict.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial attempts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's close relationship with Vance, with whom he studied and maintains a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Role in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to agree to a quick settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.

Following a chaotic first year in power, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's key aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the ceasefire plan the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key situation 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 renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial speeches, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held restrictionist and right-leaning positions close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new peace deal mirrored his stances, and he has been one of the most assertive spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's extreme terms.

In posts this past weekend, Vance argued that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or politicians residing in a dream world,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people living in the actual situation.”

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

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Doubts

That was a notably more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable standing.

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

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Stopping a complex and violent war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to consent to difficult but essential concessions. That is why we are and will persist to create a set of potential ideas for ending this war drawing from feedback from each party of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds said recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary did make a phone call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was presented to one of our representatives,” stated Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “This ceasefire plan was authored by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is presented as a strong structure for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is also based on earlier and ongoing input from Ukraine.”