Australia is bulking up specialised diplomatic teams in both Canberra and Vienna to win international acceptance for the AUKUS nuclear submarine project as it braces for a massive "disinformation" campaign from China and Russia.
In September last year Australia announced a contentious plan to acquire submarines with nuclear propulsion under a new security partnership with the United Kingdom and United States.
While the main focus has been on the technical challenges facing the ambitious proposal, all three AUKUS nations are now sizing up the formidable regulatory and geopolitical hurdles which also confront them.
One of the key diplomatic battlegrounds will be at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, the intergovernmental organisation which works to regulate the use of nuclear energy and limit the development of nuclear weapons.
Test of international diplomatic efforts
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has confirmed to the ABC that it has deployed "several" additional staff to the AUKUS initiative, including to the Australian permanent mission in Vienna.
DFAT has also been beefing up legal and diplomatic teams in Canberra which have been tasked with tackling the project's legal, regulatory and political repercussions internationally.
The scope and scale of the nuclear submarines plan were always going to place heavy demands on Australia's bureaucracy, but the challenges have been sharpened by the federal government's fraught relationship with China.
Beijing has already furiously criticised the AUKUS submarines plan, and Chinese officials have made it clear they will do everything they can in international organisations like the IAEA to delay or stymie it.
China says AUKUS plan a 'violation' of non-proliferation treaty
At an IAEA board of governors meeting late last year, China's ambassador Wang Qun criticised the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia over AUKUS, declaring the nuclear submarines plan would "spur regional countries to accelerate their development of military capabilities, and even seek to cross the nuclear threshold while increasing the risk of military conflicts".
He also pointed out that Australia would be the first non-nuclear weapons state to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.
This is not forbidden under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT), but Mr Wang said it was still an "explicit violation of the object and purposes of the NPT, to the detriment of the international non-proliferation regime".
The ambassador launched an unprecedented bid at the meeting to establish a standalone "special committee" at the IAEA devoted solely to examining the AUKUS arrangement, and he declared that the US, UK and Australia should halt the plan entirely until it had been more closely scrutinised.
China politicising issue, says Australia
But China's attacks drew a sharp response from Australia's representative to the IAEA, Richard Sadleir, who said the "special committee" idea was "nothing more than an attempt to introduce issues that are extraneous to the IAEA's technical and legal mandate and appears intended to politicise this issue".
The ABC has been told China has also been pressing other countries to throw their weight behind its campaign against AUKUS at the IAEA.
And while China's push to establish a special committee failed, the IAEA did decide to create an "agenda item" on the deal, in a clear sign it wants to monitor the implementation of the project.
'Wilful disinformation'
A spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) told the ABC: "There has been some mischaracterisations and wilful disinformation of the AUKUS partnership and Australia's acquisition of conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines."
"Australia, the UK and US have been unequivocal in reaffirming commitments to respective non-proliferation obligations," they said.
Senior lecturer in international relations at the Australian National University, Ben Zala, said it was good to see the federal government ploughing more resources into some of the legal and regulatory issues raised by AUKUS.
"It's going to need creative thinking to work out how we can figure out some new arrangement with IAEA and give other states confidence that we're not undermining the regime too much. And the only way to do that is to put more time and effort and resources into that."
But Dr Zala said nuclear-powered submarines posed unique challenges to international safeguards because they were stealthy by nature, which created "obvious problems" when it came to oversight inspection of nuclear materials.
The fact that Australia would be the first non-nuclear-weapons state to develop nuclear-powered submarines could also set a worrying precedent, he argued.
"We have kicked open the door a little bit," he said.
"So the question is: Can Australia, the UK and the US figure out some sort of arrangement with the IAEA which makes it difficult to divert this material to a weapons program, and that provides at least some degree of oversight and accountability so it can be emulated in other cases?"
AUKUS poses 'complex' legal questions
The director-general of the IAEA, Rafael Grossi, has already warned that the AUKUS nuclear submarines project will be the "first of a kind" and pose "very complex" regulatory questions to the IAEA.
"We have a group of experts, some of my best safeguards inspectors and some of my best legal experts, already working on this."
"So when they come [to us] we will have a number of questions and a number of requests."
ABC
