The attempted assassination of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has sparked an international crisis, with UK allies expelling scores of Russian diplomats in solidarity against the apparent use of chemical weapons on British soil. But behind the scenes, another crisis is unfolding: the first ever test of whether the international treaty banning these weapons can be used in a world for which it wasn’t designed.
This matters much more than a few diplomats being sent home. Arms agreements backed by science, like the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, are a centrepiece of the “” that has governed the world since 1945.
These days, that order is under increasing strain. Arms control faces serious challenges, with the and nuclear treaties. The chemical weapons treaty was designed to manage military attacks, not political assassinations. How well it fares in this standoff could affect whether the world continues to rely on such agreements to control its worst capabilities, or falls back on old-fashioned power politics.
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UK tests have identified the weapon used against the Skripals as a Novichok nerve agent. These were originally developed in the Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s, but have also been synthesised by defence labs elsewhere. So we don’t know for sure that Russian Novichok poisoned the Skripals, although European Union leaders called this “highly likely” last week.
Toxin analysis
This week, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which verifies the treaty, will to two independent, approved labs. The OPCW has never done anything like this before, says , a chemical weapons consultant.
To verify the UK’s initial findings, these samples, and the blood already tested in the UK, will be analysed by gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, with DNA sequencing to establish whose blood it is. Despite a hostile tone, Russia’s delegate to the OPCW has called this a
What would really settle the matter would be to compare the samples to Novichok agents synthesised by the Soviet Union. Vladimir Uglev, a chemist who helped develop the agents, told a that Novichok has already been used for assassination in Russia – and that as far as he knows, there is no treatment that can save the Skripals now.
He also insisted that Novichok agents were only ever made in small batches. If his product had been used in the UK attack, he says, the OPCW’s tests could not only identify which agent was involved, but could even match the samples to a specific batch.
Risk of stalemate
However, such comparisons are only possible if Russia cooperates. The UK has demanded “clarification” from Russia, under , the first time it has ever been invoked. So far Russia hasn’t been forthcoming.
If that continues, says Ralf Trapp, a former expert at the OPCW, the matter could escalate through the treaty’s executive council, to a special conference of treaty members, and then finally the UN Security Council. He fears that will only lead to stalemate – and a Russian veto at the UN.
Other tools are available, says Trapp. For example, member states could vote to add Novichok agents to the lists of chemicals that treaty signatories must declare to the OPCW for inspection. They aren’t there now because their existence was only revealed by Russian whistle-blowers just after the treaty negotiations concluded and Russia has resisted subsequent pressure to add them. If it had to declare them now, the OPCW would in theory gain access to them under routine inspections.
Under the treaty’s ultimate sanction, the UK could demand to inspect locations in Russia suspected of holding Novichoks, at short notice. But Russian officials would manage inspectors’ access and may well have cleared these sites already. As things stand, the treaty does provide mechanisms for resolving the latest chemical outrage – but only if all nations continue to see the rules-based international order as a virtue worth preserving.
