America's Secretary of the Army, Daniel Driscoll, was an unlikely diplomat for the Trump administration latest initiative to end the Russian invasion in Ukraine. His close connection with Vice President Vance has positioned a key ally of the Eurosceptic vice-president at the forefront of Donald Trump recent push to conclude the war.
Prior to his recent visit to Kyiv, Driscoll was unrecognized as a mediator or statesman, and his initial efforts to promote the agreement to officials in Europe were labeled turbulent.
His strong ties with Vance, who he attended Yale and maintains a close friendship, indicate the resurgence of the isolationist VP in negotiations to resolve the Ukraine war.
This was Vance who intervened during Ukraine's president's rocky first visit to the Trump White House in March and demanded he show Trump more respect. Currently, Ukraine is once again pushing back against demands from the US to accept a swift deal that local officials have described as a surrender.
Following a chaotic initial year in power, foreign policy decisions in the White House are reportedly influenced by a handful of Trump's top advisers, including chief of staff Susie Wiles, conservative adviser Stephen Miller, envoy Steve Witkoff, secretary of state Marco Rubio, and of course Vance.
Vance has been a vocal advocate of the recent plan, which was crafted by Witkoff and Trump's relative Jared Kushner, together with the Kremlin envoy Kirill Dmitriev.
“Every objection of the peace framework the White House is developing either misinterprets the proposal or misstates some critical situation on the ground,” the VP wrote.
Vance's early efforts at negotiating a peace deal with Russia, while simultaneously attempting to restore ties with Moscow, were fruitless and left his camp feeling disappointed with their Russian counterparts. Leaders in Europe, meanwhile, were angered by his early remarks, in which he charged them of ignoring their voters, who Vance claimed held restrictionist and conservative views similar 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 spokespeople for the deal in the government, even as the US has been under fire for endorsing a ceasefire plan that largely resembles Vladimir Putin's maximalist terms.
In posts this past weekend, Vance asserted that a ceasefire agreement would have to establish a truce that respected Ukrainian sovereignty, be acceptable to each party, and prevent the war from resuming.
“A ceasefire won’t be made by unsuccessful negotiators or politicians living in a fantasy land,” he added. “It could be made by intelligent people living in the actual situation.”
It was Vance who followed up on the introduction of the peace plan in a conversation with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Trump had primarily instructed his team with securing a agreement on the ceasefire accord prior to Thanksgiving this week in the United States.
That 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 government who has gone from a shaky position inside the administration to more firm standing.
Rubio was part of a US team that traveled to Geneva this past weekend to confer with Ukrainian officials to help moderate the initial 28-point ceasefire proposal in order to make it more acceptable to leaders in Kyiv.
But, his initial reaction to the agreement was lukewarm:
“Ending a complex and deadly conflict such as the one in Ukraine demands an thorough exchange of substantive and pragmatic ideas,” Rubio wrote over the weekend. “And, achieving a lasting peace will necessitate each party to consent to difficult but necessary compromises. This is the reason we are and will continue to create a list of potential ideas for resolving this conflict drawing from input from each party of this war.”
Behind closed doors, he was reportedly much more doubtful 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 explain that the agreement was just a preliminary proposal from the Russians and not an plan advocated by the administration.
“The Secretary did make a 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 presented to one of our officials,” stated Rounds. “It is not our recommendation, it is not our peace plan.”
Rubio acted swiftly to align himself. “The peace proposal was authored by the US,” he subsequently wrote. “The framework is presented as a solid framework for continuing negotiations. The proposal is derived from feedback from the Russian side. But, it is also based on previous and ongoing contributions from Ukraine.”
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