The US Army Secretary, Dan Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration newest initiative to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. Driscoll's close relationship with Vice President Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of President Trump's recent effort to conclude the conflict.
Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was not known as a negotiator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.
His close relationship with Vance, who he attended Yale and shares a personal bond, signal the rising influence of the isolationist VP in talks to resolve the Ukraine crisis.
It was Vance who intervened during Volodymyr Zelenskyy rocky first trip to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more courtesy. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a quick settlement that local officials have called a capitulation.
Following a chaotic first year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly shaped by a handful of Trump's key aides, such as 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 recent proposal, which was developed by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, alongside the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
“All objection of the peace framework the administration is developing either misunderstands the framework or misrepresents some critical situation on the ground,” Vance wrote.
Vance's early efforts at negotiating a ceasefire agreement with Russia, while simultaneously seeking to renew ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian interlocutors. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were irritated by his initial remarks, in which he accused them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative positions 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 assertive spokespeople for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a peace framework that mostly echoes Vladimir Putin's maximalist demands.
In posts this weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a truce that honored Ukrainian independence, be acceptable 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. “An agreement might be made by smart people operating in the real world.”
Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the peace plan in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with obtaining a signature on the peace deal prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.
Vance's stance was a distinctly more full-throated endorsement of the proposal than that given by the top diplomat 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 a member of a US delegation that went to Geneva this past weekend to confer 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 initial response to the agreement was tepid:
“Ending a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an extensive exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio stated over the weekend. “And, securing a lasting peace will require both sides to consent to challenging but essential compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a list of possible ideas for ending this conflict drawing from input from both sides of this war.”
Behind closed doors, he was said to be 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 called lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was just a initial proposal from the Russians and not an initiative advocated by the White House.
“The Secretary made a phone call to us this day and I think he made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives,” said Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our ceasefire proposal.”
Rubio moved quickly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he later wrote. “It is presented as a strong structure for ongoing discussions. It is based on input from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by previous and current input from Ukraine.”
