🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Daniel Driscoll, was an surprising diplomat for the White House's newest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's strong relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the center of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the war.

Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to European policymakers were labeled chaotic.

His close relationship with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the non-interventionist VP in negotiations to end the Ukraine crisis.

Vance's Involvement in Ceasefire Efforts

It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and insisted he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again resisting demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a capitulation.

After a tumultuous first year in office, international actions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful 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 advocate of the recent proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.

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

Early Attempts and European 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 disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, in turn, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and conservative positions similar to those of Trump's own supporters.

But, the recently published ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful spokespeople for the deal in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the conflict from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “An agreement might be made by smart people living in the real world.”

Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily tasked his staff with obtaining a signature on the ceasefire accord before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.

Rubio's Response and Private Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hawk in the administration who has transitioned from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation 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 authorities in Kyiv.

However, his first response to the deal was lukewarm:

“Ending a complex and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a durable ceasefire will necessitate both sides to consent to difficult but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for resolving this war drawing from input from both sides of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful of the proposal. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted legislators to clarify that the deal was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the White House.

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

Rubio moved quickly to fall in line. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later stated. “It is presented as a strong framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Russian side. But, it is also informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”