America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the White House's latest proposal to resolve the conflict in Ukraine. His close relationship with JD Vance has placed a key ally of the Eurosceptic VP at the center of Donald Trump latest effort to settle the war.
Before his last week's visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or diplomat, and his initial efforts to sell the deal to European policymakers were described as chaotic.
His strong ties with Vance, with whom he attended Yale and shares a close friendship, signal the rising influence of the isolationist vice-president in talks to end the Ukraine war.
It was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's disastrous first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Now, Ukraine is again pushing back against demands from the US to agree to a quick deal that local officials have called a surrender.
After a tumultuous first year in power, international decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a small group of Trump's top aides, 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 advocate of the recent proposal, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
“All criticism of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the framework or misstates some key reality on the ground,” the VP wrote.
Vance's initial efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his team feeling frustrated with their Russian interlocutors. European officials, in turn, were irritated by his early speeches, in which he charged them of running from their voters, who Vance claimed held anti-immigration and conservative views close to those of Trump's own constituency.
But, the recently published peace deal closely resembled his positions, and he has been one of the most forceful advocates for the agreement in the government, even as the US has been criticized for accepting a ceasefire plan that largely echoes Vladimir Putin's extreme demands.
In social media updates this past weekend, Vance asserted that a peace deal would have to establish a ceasefire that honored Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to both sides, and prevent the war from resuming.
“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful diplomats or officials living in a dream world,” he added. “An agreement could be made by intelligent people operating in the actual situation.”
Additionally, it was Vance who followed up on the presentation of the ceasefire proposal in a phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had mainly instructed his staff with securing a signature on the peace deal before Thanksgiving this week in the United States.
Vance's stance was a distinctly more enthusiastic endorsement of the proposal than that expressed by the secretary of state and security advisor, Marco Rubio, a more conventional hardliner in the administration who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more stable standing.
Rubio was a member of a US team that went to Geneva this weekend to meet with Ukrainian officials to help refine the original 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more palatable to authorities in Kyiv.
However, his first reaction to the deal was lukewarm:
“Stopping a complex and violent conflict such as the one in Ukraine requires an extensive discussion of substantive and realistic proposals,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “Furthermore, securing a lasting ceasefire will necessitate each party to agree to challenging but necessary compromises. That is why we are and will continue to develop a set of potential ideas for ending this war based on input from both sides of this war.”
In private, he was said to be much more skeptical of the plan. The GOP lawmaker Mike Rounds stated recently at the Halifax International Security Forum in Nova Scotia that Rubio had contacted lawmakers to clarify that the agreement was merely a preliminary offer from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the White House.
“The Secretary made a call to us this afternoon and I believe he emphasized to us that we are the receivers of a proposal that was delivered to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “The document is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”
Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was written by the US,” he subsequently stated. “It is offered as a strong structure for ongoing negotiations. The proposal is based on feedback from the Moscow. But, it is also informed by earlier and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”
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