🔗 Share this article

America's Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an surprising envoy for the White House's newest proposal to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with JD Vance has placed a close associate of the Euroskeptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest push to conclude the conflict.

Prior to his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a negotiator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the deal to European policymakers were labeled turbulent.

His close ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, signal the resurgence of the non-interventionist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine crisis.

The VP's Involvement in Peace Negotiations

This was Vance who stepped in during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky initial visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is once again pushing back against pressure from the US to accept a quick deal that local officials have called a surrender.

Following a tumultuous initial year in office, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including top aide Susie Wiles, rightwing adviser Stephen Miller, diplomat Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.

Vance has been a outspoken supporter of the latest proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, alongside the Russian diplomat Kirill Dmitriev.

“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some critical reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.

Early Efforts and European Responses

Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while also seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance said held anti-immigration and right-leaning 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 assertive advocates for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for accepting a ceasefire plan that mostly resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.

In social media updates this past weekend, Vance argued that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that respected Ukrainian independence, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.

“Peace will not be made by unsuccessful negotiators or officials living in a dream world,” he continued. “It might be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”

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

The Secretary of State's Response and Internal Concerns

Vance's stance was a notably more enthusiastic support of the plan than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more traditional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a uncertain position inside the administration to more firm standing.

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

But, his first response to the deal was tepid:

“Stopping a complicated and violent war such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a lasting ceasefire will require each party to consent to challenging but essential concessions. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a set of possible ideas for ending this conflict drawing from feedback from both sides of this war.”

Behind closed doors, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The Republican senator Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had called legislators to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the administration.

“The Secretary made a call to us this day and I think he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” said Rounds. “It is not our suggestion, it is not our peace plan.”

Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he later wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for ongoing discussions. The proposal is derived from input from the Russian side. But, it is additionally based on previous and ongoing input from Ukraine.”