Chemical security

Was the Poisoning of a Former Russian Spy a Chemical Weapons Attack?

The Skripal poisoning wasn’t a battlefield attack, of course, but the Chemical Weapons Convention, of which both Russia and Britain are signatories, prohibits the use of toxic chemicals such as nerve agents except for a few, specifically described purposes; assassinating ex-spies on foreign soil is not one of them.

Matthew Meselson, a molecular biologist who co-directs the Harvard-Sussex Program on Chemical and Biological Weapons, told me by email that “if a nerve agent is deliberately used or even retained by a state” for a purpose not specified under the convention, that would be a violation. On the other hand, “if the use of a nerve agent is not actually ordered by a state, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrators, that use would not be in violation of the CWC. As you can imagine, proving that a state actually ordered such use, even defining what a state is in such a case, could present difficulties.”

Just last week, the U.S. slapped new sanctions on North Korea over the use of the nerve agent VX in the assassination of leader Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother in Malaysia last year. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert described that attack as a “public display of contempt for universal norms against chemical weapons use [that] further demonstrates the reckless nature of North Korea and underscores that we cannot afford to tolerate a North Korean WMD program of any kind.”