The U.S. editor of British conservative weekly The Spectator says that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio may be headed for a very public clash in the wake of the “imbroglio of the Ukraine peace deal.“
President Donald Trump’s administration is currently pushing for a peace deal to end the war in Ukraine, which is based on a controversial 28-point plan that has since been “fine-tuned” after push back from Ukraine and its European allies.
Freddy Gray writes that this peace seems elusive.
“Thanksgiving weekend ends on Sunday, and still there’s no peace in Ukraine. Donald Trump’s latest attempt to end the war – his 28-point plan – began to fall apart from the moment it mysteriously leaked to various international news outfits last week,” Gray says.
Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine, announced he would resign in January, throwing a wrench into that deal as well, Gray explains.
“Kellogg, who represents the more ardently pro-Ukrainian faction of the administration, had clashed repeatedly with Trump’s peace envoy Steve Witkoff, who has been engaging in friendly dialogue with Moscow for most of the year,” he writes.
Kellogg’s resignation, Gray says, “seemed linked to the fact that Dan Driscoll, the secretary of the US army and an ally of J.D. Vance, had been dispatched to Geneva to tell the Ukrainians to accept the latest deal or forget about America’s continued support.”
This, Gray writes, “triggered Trump’s desperation to strike a deal and declare peace,” which led to him “selling Ukraine out and blindsiding his European allies.”
“Trump was, once again, accused of being a Kremlin stooge. The Independent claimed that the his plan had been ‘entirely dictated by [Vladimir] Putin,’” he writes.
Gray says that this latest “imbroglio” reveals “some interesting tensions with the Trump administration’s approach.”
“Vance, representing the anti-war paleoconservative faction, appears to be angry with his fellow Republicans for, as he sees it, scuppering the White House’s ceasefire efforts,” he writes.
“But some of Vance’s allies, if not necessarily the vice president himself, also feel some bitterness towards Secretary of State Marco Rubio,” he adds.
Rubio has been leading talks in Geneva, Switzerland, to develop and refine a Ukraine peace proposal. There was initial confusion and controversy over the authorship of the U.S. plan, as a number of senators claimed Rubio had told them the initial 28-point draft was essentially a Russian “wish list”.
Rubio and the White House have since insisted the plan was authored by the U.S. with “input” from both the Russian and Ukrainian sides, and the document has been revised.
“Despite his apparent conversion to the America First agenda, Rubio remains on the more hawkish end of the Trump foreign-policy spectrum,” Gray notes.
“The White House insists, of course, that the entire Cabinet is ‘working in lockstep’ towards the shared goal of ending the war: Witkoff, Rubio, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, put on at least the appearance of a united front in Switzerland,” he adds.
And while Gray says Rubio and Vance seem to be on “friendly terms despite their inevitable rivalry [for the] 2028 Republican presidential nomination,” tensions are mounting between the two.
“It is also evident that Rubio and Vance have very different approaches when it comes to dealing with Europe and Ukraine,” he writes.
“That could set them on course towards a more public clash in the coming months, as Team Trump becomes increasingly frustrated with its failure to end the most difficult war of our time,” he adds.
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