Vance ignites outrage in Britain with ‘random country’ comment

LONDON >> Vice President JD Vance has sparked a storm of criticism in Britain after declaring that a U.S. economic deal in Ukraine was a “better security guarantee than 20,000 troops from some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years.”

Britain, which along with France has pledged troops to a peacekeeping force in Ukraine, fought with the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, while French troops fought in Afghanistan. No other countries have said they would send troops to Ukraine.

Vance later insisted that his comments, in an interview Monday night with Fox News host Sean Hannity, did not refer to Britain or France, though he did not name any alternative countries.

Few in Britain were buying it, even on the right.

“JD Vance is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigrant party, Reform U.K., and a longtime ally of President Donald Trump. “We stood by America all through those 20 years putting in exactly the same contribution.”

“Vance Shame,” said the headline on the homepage of The Sun, the leading right-wing tabloid published by Rupert Murdoch.

James Cartlidge, the shadow defense secretary of the Conservative Party, noted in a post on social media that NATO’s Article 5 — which declares that an attack against one member state is an attack against them all — had been invoked only once in the alliance’s history, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Britain and France had come to America’s aid then, he said, “deploying 1,000s of personnel to Afghanistan, including my own brother & numerous parliamentary colleagues, past and present.” He added, “It’s deeply disrespectful to ignore such service and sacrifice.”

Helen Maguire, a spokesperson for the Liberal Democratic Party on defense and a former captain in Britain’s Royal Military Police who served on a NATO peacekeeping mission in Iraq, said, “JD Vance is erasing from history the hundreds of British troops who gave their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Sébastien Lecornu, France’s defense minister, told lawmakers in Paris on Tuesday that Vance had “fortunately corrected his statement” but added that the 600 or so French soldiers who had died in service over the past 60 years “deserve our respect and the respect of our allies.”

The leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, Kemi Badenoch, however, said she did not believe that Vance was referring to Britain when he spoke about a random country. “A lot of people are getting carried away,” she said to GB News. “They’re saying loads of things and getting quite animated.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

© 2025 The New York Times Company