Leaders of the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia announced a plan on Monday to build a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines for Australia – an arrangement that has raised fears of nuclear proliferation and threatens to destabilize the Pacific region according to experts.

Under this arrangement, the U.S. would sell Australia three Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines built by General Dynamics in the early 2030s with an option to buy two more if needed. Australia would pay $9 billion over the next four years and over $368 billion over the next three decades, according to Australian officials.

Addressing a ceremony at the U.S. naval base in San Diego while accompanied by British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, U.S. President Joe Biden called the deal under the 2021 AUKUS Partnership part of a shared commitment to a "free-and-open" Indo-Pacific region.

Since its announcement, the deal has been met with swift condemnation and suspicion from around the world. Sultan M. Hali, expert in international politics and columnist at Pakistan Today, said If the nuclear submarines reach Australia, that means they will endanger 22 countries and two oceans which is not welcomed at all.

"The United States of America on the one hand suppresses countries like Iran and North Korea and arms other nations, especially those who are facing no threat like Australia, it spells out double standards," Hali said.

Together, the three countries are traveling "further down the wrong and dangerous path for their own geopolitical self-interest, completely ignoring the concerns of the international community," said Wang Wenbin, spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry during a press briefing on Tuesday.

Wang said the AUKUS security pact which was first announced in 2021 arises from the "typical Cold War mentality which will only motivate an arms race, damage the international nuclear nonproliferation regime, and harm regional stability and peace."

"It's unnecessary for Australia to be involved in this arms race - from no risk to full of risks – I don't know why Australia accepted this deal," Lyu Xiang, research fellow at the Institute of American Study at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told CGTN. "The U.S. has enlarged its nuclear footprint using the money from Australia which was in turn dragged onto the U.S.' chariot and made trouble for itself."

"In the name of increasing employment, the submarines were decided to be produced in Australia. But later their production was transferred back to the U.S. It's a lie the Australian government made to its people, but how long will it last?"

The AUKUS scheme represents the first time a loophole in the 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has been used to transfer fissile material and nuclear technology from a nuclear weapons state to a non-weapons state, according to The Guardian.

The loophole is paragraph 14, which allows fissile material utilized for non-explosive military use, like naval propulsion, to be exempt from inspections and monitoring by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It makes arms controls experts nervous because it sets a precedent that could be used by others to hide highly enriched uranium, or plutonium, the core of a nuclear weapon, from international oversight, according to the newspaper.

The multi-stage project would culminate with British and Australian production and operation of a new class of submarine known as "SSN-AUKUS" - a "trilaterally developed" vessel based on Britain's next-generation design that would be built in the UK and Australia and include "cutting edge" U.S. technologies.

Former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating called the submarine purchase plan the "worst deal in all history" during an interview at the National Press Club on Wednesday. Keating argued that China is "not going to attack us and have never threatened to attack us", suggesting that the AUKUS trilateral partnership is instead about preserving U.S. "hegemony" in east Asia by seeking to contain China.

"What Anthony Albanese has done this week, he's screwed into place the last shackle in the long chain which the Americans have laid out to contain China," he said. Keating said the "great sin" China had committed in the eyes of the West was developing its economy to equal the size of the U.S., suggesting the Americans "would have preferred" 20% of the world population remains in poverty.