On the surface, the Skripal poisoning seems like a minor issue on the scale of international politics: a couple of Russian secret service agents poison a couple of Russian citizens in their UK home. Understandably a big enough crime for the pair of assassins to go to jail, but a relatively minor issue in the grand scheme of things compared to an event such as the invasion of Crimea.
So why does the UK government raise so much fuss about the whole ordeal? What's the big deal?
What's the big deal?
The UK government believes that the government of Russia sent military personnel onto its territory to kill UK citizens. There's a word for one country sending its military into another country uninvited, and the word is "war".
To make matters worse, this killing was carried out using chemical weapons. These are Weapons of Mass Destruction under the internationally recognized Geneva Protocol in 1925 (Russian withdrawal in 2001), BWC in 1972 (Russian signed and ratified), and CWC in 1993 (Russian signed and ratified) - and the fact that the only death was of an unrelated civilian and the widespread contamination of the area demonstrates the accuracy of this description. The UK government has not formalised this to the same extent as the US, but the Butler Review described UK policy as following US doctrine.
So, the UK believes Russia has carried out an act of war using weapons of mass destruction. If you don't consider this a big deal, I don't understand why not.
One of the primary functions of government is to protect its residents from capricious actions of foreign governments.
In fact, one of the tests for a government to be recognized as sovereign is that they reserve for themselves a monopoly on the use of force within their boundaries. Many governments refuse recognition of the various aspirational Palestinian governments precisely because they do not have this. You simply must have this condition to be considered sovereign in your own territory.
Because of this, willfully using violence within the borders of another country without their permission has always been considered a red line. Doing that is simply incompatible with recognition of that government as a sovereign entity.
The UK really has only two options here; either do nothing and tacitly admit that they will allow Russia to whatever it wants within UK borders (and are thus essentially a client state), or publicly put a stop to it.
The traditional way to "publicly put a stop to it" of course has always been war.
Using chemical weapons crosses a line in international agreed norms. In this case the use of them killed a British Civilian, compounding the seriousness.
This is a continuation of previous behaviour - at some point you have to say 'No' loudly enough or else Russia will take it as open season on anyone it wants to murder.
'Why the big deal' - I'd argue not enough of a deal has been made. The headline retaliation has been that a few 'diplomats' (read spies, but to be fair everyone does that) have been expelled.
The assassination was designed to show a message - don't cooperate with the UK/West. At a time where Russia has de-facto invaded its neighbour the UK/West needs intelligence more than ever, and need to send their own message to potential assets - 'we're not going to just sit back while you're murdered'.
There have been a number of similar murders linked to Russia, which raised little fuss at the time. However these (with the exception of Litvinenko) were not carried out using poison.
The big fuss is about the use of poison. First, the use of poison (and particularly nerve agents) is banned by international treaty. Second, their use carries significant risk of harm to other people and a major clean-up challenge (Litvinenko, Skripal) for the country where they were used.
Also, with many of the previous murders the link to the Russian state is tentative and circumstantial; if someone is shot on their doorstep it might have been some kind of gangland killing or personal vendetta. However use of polonium or nerve agents is a clear sign of government involvement.
Russia is the big deal.
An example with little to no "big fuss": Turkey. The turkish intelligence services are regularly implicated (and sometimes convicted) in political executions in Europe (examples: London, Paris).
However: Turkey is officially an ally, Russia is not. There's some (short lived) public outcry in the media after each case, and some quiet criticism on government levels, but no sanctions or other lasting repercussions.
It's not about the actions, it's about who is committing them.
Let's start with the "whataboutery" (you can't complain about this because what about something else). Britain has been very vocal about the Crimea situation but it's a foreign issue between two sovereign nations, neither of which are Britain.
As for why they should bother about the Skripal's it's as simple as a foreign nation sent spies to another nation to poison people using a military grade chemical weapon. I could go on to expand all the reasons wrong with that, but essentially as it was state sponsored then it is akin to an act of war.
There are a few unwritten rule when one county kills someone in another.
Add to all the above that a large area of a city is having to be decontaminated at great cost.
If it was done by "pushing someone under a bus" it is unlikely much would have be done........
The resultant 'fuss' is the increasingly angry response to an accumulated series of Russian acts of aggression - followed by the tried and tested tactic: repeated denial and obfuscation.
Precedence. If the UK become aware that this is happening on UK soil and they turn a blind eye to it then Russia will keep doing it. Other countries will see that the UK was soft on this and also start doing it.
Then it can spread to other countries and this can become a normal thing, internationally.
One of the reasons the International community was so robust in responding to this is that no country wants this to become the norm, where a government can go around poisoning people they don't like. It could start with spies getting poisoned, then defectors, political opponents and international leaders etc.
Twitter arguments could turn into executions. So it needed to be nipped in the bud, robustly before it became a more widespread way of dealing with things.
Will Russia stop? Probably not, but every other country now knows it's a big no no. It's bad enough than country bug and spy on each other, but in this case a line was crossed. Diplomacy is always the favoured option.
Also, Russia is becoming increasingly aggressive on other fronts. These include Russian hacking, which most IT security guys living in the UK are well aware of. We're constantly dealing with attempted attacks from Russian IP addresses. This involves everything from spamming to ransomware and brute force attacks and attempts to break in to networks and servers. They are also involved in a lot of the ICO crypto scams. Then there's Crimea, Syria and the fact that Russian military vehicles keep on entering our airspace and sea territories without permission. The UK is more than right to be concerned about Russian actions and intentions.
The mainstream explanation has already been given.
There is an alternative theory, which is not strictly exclusive:
It serves a greater political purpose.
There are a number of oddities in the handling of the Skripal case, including the fact that the victims are seemingly completely isolated now from both press and family and why one of the presumably most deadly poisons in the world, applied by presumably agents of a superpower secret service failed to actually kill. There are more oddities that a quick Google search will reveal.
The case does serve a number of political purposes, however. It contributes to the ongoing narrative about Russia as an aggressor. It helps to put Russia on the defensive in other topics. And it helps as a distractor from whatever topic of the day needs distraction.
It is being used in such manners. Among the various ways of handling the issue, the one being used at this time is the one that is the most useful to UK politicians.
Note: I don't pass judgement on who is the guilty party, there are a number of claims that it wasn't actually the Russians. My argument is entirely about the "raising of so much fuss" as asked in the question.
It may be partly linked to the American claims that Russia hacked the 2016 election by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party. Both Labour and Tory parties have close ties to the Democratic party, much closer than to the Republican party, especially since the Tea party take over.
There is quite a trigger happy response to Russia and it's allies (Iran and Syria) state actions, and a tendency to default to guilty until proven innocent (with no independent investigations. While Russia certainly did meddle in the 2016 election, it's social media campaign was very small, and most of its ads were run after the election. More serious are the claims that Russia hacked the DNC servers, and leaked secret emails from the Clinton campaign that may have cost her votes. The nature of these emails was interesting, often dealing with collusion between the Clinton campaign, the media and the DNC, in favor of Clinton and to the detriment of Bernie Sanders. Despite this, Clinton won the popular vote, but lost overall due to the Electoral College, and Clinton went on to blame Russia for Trump winning the election.
US media has been going crazy with the Russia stories ever since. I think that in part, the Skripal poisoning furore may be an act of solidarity with the Democratic party establishment. We know that international politics often takes the from of team sports, where we adopt the enemies of our allies, and we also adopt the friends of our allies. The UK and Canada joining in America's invasion of Iraq in 2003 was quite a good example of this. But of course, it was also a serious incident. A chemical weapons attack on British soil. I remain sceptical as to whether Russia would be brazen or stupid enough to carry out a chemical weapons attack on UK soil, especially with the anti Russian hysteria in America, but it's a possibility, and one that needs to be taken very seriously.
