🔗 Share this article

The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of President Trump's recent effort to settle the war.

Prior to his last week's trip to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or diplomat, and his early efforts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were described as turbulent.

Driscoll's strong relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, indicate the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Role in Peace Efforts

This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a swift settlement that Ukrainian leaders have called a surrender.

After a chaotic initial year in office, international decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's top aides, including top aide Susie Wiles, conservative advisor Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and finally Vance.

Vance has been a vocal advocate of the latest proposal, 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 framework or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” Vance stated.

Early Attempts and European Responses

Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore relations with Moscow, were unsuccessful and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his initial remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their constituents, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views close to those of Trump's own constituency.

However, the new ceasefire proposal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the administration, even as the US has been criticized for accepting 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 respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be agreeable to each party, and stop the war from resuming.

“A ceasefire won’t be made by failed diplomats or officials residing in a fantasy land,” he continued. “It could be made by smart people operating in the real world.”

It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his team with securing a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this Thursday in the United States.

The Secretary of State's Reaction and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more full-throated support of the plan than that given by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky stature inside the White House to more stable footing.

Rubio was a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian leaders 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:

“Stopping a complicated and deadly war such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough discussion of substantive and pragmatic proposals,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “Furthermore, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate both sides to agree to difficult but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to create a set of potential solutions for ending this conflict based on input from each party of this conflict.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more doubtful of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds said last week at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to explain that the agreement was just a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative pushed by the administration.

“The Secretary made a phone call to us this afternoon 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 moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”