Did you know it’s a war crime to pepper spray soldiers in war but legal for police to use it on civilians domestically?

Yes.

Also, pepper spray is not tear gas. Tear gas is CS gas.

Tear gas is illegal in warfare due to it being a chemical agent along with mustard gas, chlorine gas and many others. It’s legal to use on civilians (in some countries) because laws governing domestic employment of force are up to the countries themselves.

Isn’t that because tear gas can be confused for lethal gas use in war, which would result in dangerous counter measures and retaliation?

It’s banned in war because of escalation risks.

You see your enemies drop gas in your trench, your soldiers put on gas masks, no one has time to take samples of the gas and carefully put them in special containers avoiding contamination, send it to a lab and do a careful chemical analysis of what gas it was. You just respond with something much more nasty. Ooops. Now we’re back to WW1.

Civilians usually don’t have chemical weapons or tactical nukes to overreact with, so gassing them is relatively safe.

My unit did one of the last rotations in Kosovo in 2003. We had tear gas and whatnot on hand to use for crowd control issues, but we were told that using it required pretty high authorization. Meanwhile, we walked around with loaded weapons and if we ever felt threatened, we were told to shoot to kill – and that didn’t require authorization by higher command.

Shooting someone, authorization not required. Tear gassing a potentially violent mob, authorization required.

Credit to u/Jon_Beveryman to this response he created on r/askhistorians a few years ago on a similar topic (https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gwtj89/the_chemical_weapons_convention_1993_has/?rdt=42899):

This is a question of obvious contemporary political importance so I will endeavor to answer it cautiously and with respect to the emotions it no doubt raises.

The logic here is best found in some of the signatory nations’ legal interpretations and internal Law of Armed Conflict manuals,neatly summarized by the Red Cross here. . The Dutch manual of 2005, for instance, tells us the following:

Riot control agents such as tear gas may not be used as a method of warfare (Chemical Weapons Convention Article 1). Use as a means of maintaining order, including the control of internal unrest, is not prohibited. Military use must be distinguished from this. This conceals the danger that the use of a relatively harmless chemical may unleash the use of some other, more lethal one by the adversary…[M]ilitary use of a non-lethal weapon may pose the danger that the adversary perceives it as a forbidden means, which may induce the adversary to use other, more lethal means. One example is the use of tear gas, mentioned above.

Chemical weapons pose particular problems on the battlefield as weapons of mass destruction. In the case of tear gas and other riot control agents, which do not pose major concerns in terms of environmental persistence, excessive painfulness, persistence of pain after the victim is removed from exposure to the gas, and potential for permanent injury, the problem posed is one of escalation. Consider two armies locked in combat, let’s call them Red and Blue. Each side is a signatory to the same chemical weapons treaties, each side has a robust no-first-use policy, but each side has a stockpile of lethal chemical weapons including nerve agents as a deterrent to the enemy’s use of chemical weapons. Neither side adheres to the 1993 rule on riot agents. A low-level Blue commander, Major Indigo, is having a hell of a time getting a Red battalion off an important hill. Major Indigo requests permission to fire tear gas onto the hill to dislodge the Red forces. It’s an important hill, taking it could turn the tide of battle, and so his boss Colonel Cyan authorizes it. Meanwhile, the Red forces under Major Crimson are taking no chances. They’ve been sweating in their gas masks and chemical suits all day, just in case. The call comes down the line – gas, gas, gas! – and Red’s soldiers hunker down nervously, safe but uneasy in their protective gear. None of them are exposed, so it’s hard to tell immediately just what chemical they got hit with. Major Crimson calls his boss, General Ruby. General Ruby knows one thing: when weapons of mass destruction are in play, you have to maintain the credibility of your deterrence. Blue has to be shown immediately that use of chemical weapons will not go unpunished. With staff academy lectures on “escalation dominance” echoing in the back of his mind, General Ruby signs the paperwork authorizing a limited but punishing chemical weapon retaliation. Three short-ranged ballistic missiles loaded with nerve gas are fired at Blue’s position. Colonel Cyan, Major Indigo and their subalterns die a horrific, gasping death. An hour later, as Blue’s own bombers and missiles loaded with mustard and VX begin to launch, the battlefield lab analysis lands on General Ruby’s desk. Just tear gas.

The above scenario seems perhaps melodramatic or overwrought, but it highlights the stakes involved with weapons of mass destruction and the extreme consequences of incomplete information. The presence of nonlethal chemical agents on the battlefield creates a risk far out of proportion to the actual severity of the weapons themselves.

As for sourcing, in addition to the link given above, my perspective on deterrence, escalation risks, and the consequences for uncautious behavior with WMDs is heavily informed by Larsen and Karchtner’s On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century and the opinions on so-called “battlefield” nuclear weapons expressed by Michael Kofman in several of his CSIS presentations. These both do not directly connect to chemical weapons, but many of the concepts of deterrence are similar across categories of WMD; there is simply more literature on nuclear weapons than chemical.

EDIT FOR SOURCING: Savoy, Sagan, and Wirtz’s 2000 Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Weapons was also at the back of my mind when I was chewing on this question.

OBLIGATORY MORNING-AFTER EDIT: Folks, please stop giving me gold. I appreciate the gesture, but giving money to reddit is probably the least useful thing you could be doing with that money. There are a massive number of nonprofits that need that money far more than reddit does. Reddit has a profitable ad revenue stream, and more importantly, reddit has spent the last decade platforming and giving shelter to white supremacist groups. Give your money to literally anyone else.

CS gas can be used in a war zone for crowd and riot control, but it cannot be used as a weapon against the enemy. Dropping CS to control crowds was something we had a protocol for when serving in Afghanistan. You would rack a weapon, like a shotgun with less-than-lethal bean bag rounds or the big motherfucking ma-deuce to try to get people to back up and clear the way; CS would be dropped if those methods didn’t work.

Would you rather then police use lethal force like they do in war?

Have been teargased many times in protests.

I don’t mind it so much really and it’s better than being shot.

I think that’s why soldiers shoot each other instead because soldiers are not meant to be as nice as cops

CS gas is about as deadly as drinking filtered water. Outside of maybe some strange, rare reactions there is no permanent damage. It’s banned in war because anything chemical related is banned. Not because it is somehow too dangerous or cruel.

There are even some people who are effectively immune to tear gas. There are no people immune to nerve agents. This article is click bait for people who already hate the gov’t and/or the police.

become an armed combatant….then they can’t tear gas you. /S

Why does anyone care about what is a war crime anyways? We have multiple countries that will break any part of the geneva convention and never see any consequence for it

What a rage bait article. Nothing interesting here unless you think Tear Gas = Pepper Spray.

War is international, police are domestic.

The idea behind “war crimes” is to ensure that nations maintain a certain degree of “good faith” in their dealings. By honoring these rules, a nation shows that they can be trusted to honor treaties, as well. So, peace remains achievable.

But enforcing such rules on other nations about domestic policies ignores the sovereignty of that nation. If others nations can dictate what you can an can’t do to your own populace, whose populace is it, really?

This is what sanctions are. They are deliberate attempts to exercise authority over another nation’s domestic policies. The “rightness” of the sanctions is irrelevant.

That’s what a cocktail is for


Lots of things are illegal during war that are legal during peace time.

In war, both sides are trying to kill each other. If one side is blinded with tear gas, they’ll literally be slaughtered.

In a protest, no one is trying to kill anyone. Use of tear gas can disperse crowds and prevent escalating violence.

in War you use bullets. Do you want police to just use bullet instead of gas?

It’s still better than the alternative, lethal force.

the obvious answer is that Tear Gas is Not Pepper Spray.

they are different entirely and this is click bait

“yes, we’re your enemies, but for Christ’s sakes don’t dare treat us like your own, that would be just dehumanizing” is the state of things globally

I was hit with two rubber bullets and tear gas during the George Floyd riots in LA. The tear gas was panic inducing until you get out of the cloud. Can’t breathe, and can’t open your eyes. Burns like crazy. Some of it will stick to your face, but if you have some water or better yet milk, you’ll be back to normal pretty quick.

One of the images in my head that day was a hooded guy with a gallon of milk pouring it on the face of this kid who was full on Hasidic Jew who was crying his eyes out. Crazy day.

“Peaceful” protests.

On a side note, CS is extremely effective when one intends to use it lethally. An enemy confined in a room that has no significant air intakes will simply die quite painfully if he doesn’t have the necessary equipment and can’t leave the confined position.

When used lawfully on the civilian population, a law-enforcement officer must make sure that the device can emit smoke or detonate in an open area that allows the group to disperse in a safe direction. In the case of explosive CS grenades he must also take into account a safety radius that minimizes damages due to shrapnel (the radius is manufacturer-dependent). That’s what all manuals say. I’ve deployed these devices in such circumstances before with no unintended consequences. I don’t know how things work in the US, though.