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Notes -
I agree with this, but let me rephrase this conclusion: Rubio is running a relatively classically (in an American sense) conservative foreign policy. They think Europe is weak and prissy, they don't trust international institutions, and they believe in unilateral action if allies are uncooperative, but their assessment of who US friends and enemies are is fairly conventional. Vance is pushing an extremely online The-West-Has-Fallen foreign policy. Openly worrying about the immigration policy and demographics of another continent is very peculiar from a normal security perspective, but makes significantly more sense as an expression of the not-so-subtly-white-supremacist faction of the Trumpist coalition. However, it's not really clear to me how much actual influence Vance wields in foreign policy versus being a dancing monkey for certain elements of the base.
Trump is, of course, drunkenly careening around doing whatever crosses his mind in the moment and leaving his subordinates to try and pick up the pieces (we're apparently back to threatening to invade our allies). This doesn't really help either faction - Rubio et al want the EU to cooperate in the anti-China coalition, which is significantly less likely if Trump insists on pissing directly into their mouth, while the Vance/Miller faction has to worry about Trump's behavior negatively polarizing European voters against the RW populist parties they're trying to promote (see also: the Poilievre collapse in Canada).
Vance did make an odd comment a few weeks ago on 12/22:
"Consider this hypothetical: If an opportunity is presented that would make Marco Rubio look good, be great for the administration, and wouldn't really involve me (at least publicly), what do I do?" Vance continued. "If I'm optimizing for 2028, I try to kill the opportunity. If I'm optimizing for the country, for the administration, and to be a good human being, we do it."
And it seems hard to imagine that this comment isn't about the Venezuela operation, considering that some reporting has claimed it was scheduled to launch on Christmas Day before the Nigeria strikes distracted everyone. Maybe Vance wants to claim he chose not to fight instead of having no influence? But Vance was in the Houthi strikes Signal group and actively talking, where Marco seemed to just be there pro forma, and Vance is clearly more aligned with a number of the other defense policy principals like Colby and Caldwell.
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