President Donald Trump loves to utilize nontraditional emissaries for foreign policy to help the conventional U.S. diplomats.
He leaned on his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer who had not had diplomatic experience prior to Trump’s second term, to seal the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, and now, with a renewed push to end the Russia-Ukraine war, his new unconventional diplomat is Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.
After a week of intense negotiations, Trump announced Tuesday that diplomats have made “tremendous progress” toward ending the war and that in the near future Witkoff will head to Moscow to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, while Driscoll will meet with the Ukrainians.
Driscoll was in Ukraine last week and is now in the United Arab Emirates to continue diplomatic efforts with both the Russians and Ukrainians. It was his first trip to Ukraine as secretary, according to a U.S. official, and he had previously been uninvolved in these ongoing negotiations.
“The president identified and designated the secretary of the Army as another key representative of the U.S. government to restart peace negotiations to work with the Ukrainians and try to keep moving this stuff forward,” the U.S. official told the Washington Examiner.
These are not traditional responsibilities that would fall to the Army secretary to carry out.
Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, War Secretary Pete Hegseth, and White House chief of staff Susie Wiles will be briefed “on all progress made” on the negotiations, the president said.
Rubio, who serves as the president’s national security adviser in addition to being the top diplomat, has also played a large role in the negotiations, which is traditionally how such diplomacy is conducted.
Driscoll is an Army veteran who deployed with the 10th Mountain Division in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He worked in venture capital and private equity and is a close friend of Vance after the pair met at Yale Law School.
“I also think [Driscoll] struck a really good tone where MAGA likes him, Trump supporters like him, the president likes him, but because he had served previously, he gets the lingo,” Leslie Shedd, a former senior adviser on the House Foreign Affairs Committee who now serves as a nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, told the Washington Examiner.
Prior to his newfound inclusion in the Ukraine-Russia negotiations, Driscoll had been widely known for his effort to modernize the Army, particularly with his aggressive push to field various drones with offensive and defensive capabilities.
The president has referred to Driscoll as his “drone guy,” according to several outlets, a nickname that underscores Driscoll’s priorities for the Army, and one that highlights why he met with leaders from Ukraine’s defense industrial base while he was there last week.
Russian and Ukrainian forces have demonstrated the modernization of drone warfare on the battlefield. Both sides have developed and begun mass-producing both offensive and defensive unmanned systems and now have real-world experience to further their respective arsenals.
“I’ve been very impressed by him for many reasons,” Shedd said. “The biggest is I feel like, and this is not to disparage any of the other senior officials at DOW, but I think that he has, above all, become kind of the go-to guy on acquisition reform, and really like dragging the defense industrial base and the Pentagon in particular, into the modern era.”
She does not believe that Trump chose Driscoll “instead of Hegseth” for this push for a ceasefire, rather the president is “trying to pull in as many of his all-stars as he can.”
Hegseth, for his part, has had little involvement in the administration’s efforts to end the war after getting off to an icy start.
Less than a month into his tenure and on his first trip abroad as secretary, Hegseth said obtaining a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders, prior to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, was “an unrealistic objective.”
The former Fox News host also gave up the U.S. perch as the organizer of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which was first formed under his predecessor, former Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. Austin, in the spring of 2022, stood up the group, which would meet monthly to discuss how to best aid Ukraine. The meetings still occur, but Hegseth did not carry on the mantle of leading the group, instead giving that responsibility to the United Kingdom and Germany.
While Driscoll met with Russian and Ukrainian leaders, Hegseth has spent this week criticizing six Democratic lawmakers who produced a video last week reminding service members about their obligation not to follow illegal orders.
TRUMP OUTLINES NEXT STAGE OF UKRAINE-RUSSIA PEACE NEGOTIATIONS
Hegseth announced there would be a review of the one person who is still required to follow the Uniform Code of Military Justice, Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ). The FBI has reached out to the Capitol Police to arrange interviews with all six of them.
Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO), Rep. Maggie Goodlander (D-NH), Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-PA), and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (D-PA) participated in the video as well.
