Merry Christmas, everyone.  This is a little Christmas Bonus, for you, and there’s more to come.  All the best, folks – travel well, enjoy time with your family, or if you don’t celebrate the holiday, stay well and be peaceful, anyway.

And as before, here’s the text from above:

REPUBLIC OF CUBA
DIPLOMATIC APPELLATION: República de Cuba
CONVENTIONAL SHORT FORM: Cuba
CAPITAL: Havana
LARGEST CITY: Santiago de Cuba
AREA: 42,426 sq. mi.
POPULATION: 15.2 Million (1996 est.)
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Constitutional Democratic Republic
HEAD OF STATE: President
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: Prime Minister
INDEPENDENCE: 1897 (from Spain)
ESTABLISHMENT: 1899 (current Constitution)

Cuba has long had close ties with the United States, in spite of the rather rocky relationship the two countries had in the early days after the Cuban War of Independence. Cuban researchers participated heavily in the U.S. Atomic Program throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the Cuban government detonated its first atomic weapon in 1979 with American assistance. Cuba possesses no native Uranium resources, and purchases the majority of its weapons material from the United States as part of a weapons-sharing arrangement. Cuba is a particularly strong advocate of an aggressive UNA atomic deterrent, and has the largest atomic stockpiles relative to its population of any atomic nation on Earth. Cuba is also in a geopolitically vital location in proximity to the Southern Coalition. This latter point is not lost on global strategists seeking to draw CONASUR into closer relations with the UNA, with some viewing Cuba as a possible starting point for such political inroads due to the shared culture and history of the nation with its South American neighbors. Cubans themselves are less enthusiastic, preferring a strong defense against possible CONASUR aggression.

EMPIRE OF JAPAN
DIPLOMATIC APPELLATION: Dai Nihon Teikoku
CONVENTIONAL SHORT FORM: Japan
CAPITAL: Kyoto
LARGEST CITY: Tokyo
AREA: 155,934 sq. mi.
POPULATION: 101.2 Million (1996 est.)
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Constitutional Monarchy and Parliamentary Democracy
HEAD OF STATE: Emperor
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: Prime Minister
INDEPENDENCE: None (Japan has been an established state society since at least 600 b.c.)
ESTABLISHMENT: 313 a.d. (earliest verifiable date for reign of Emperor Nintoku); 1879 (Taisho Constitution)

Japan’s atomic arsenal is highly controversial. At the start of the century, even up to the late 1930’s, Japan was an imperial power, and engaged in a series of long and ultimately unsuccessful territorial wars with China between 1933 and 1946 that continues to dog Sino-Japanese relations. However, the decolonization of Japan in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with a radical upswing in communist influence in Asia, particularly with the splitting-up of China, with the western mass of the country becoming a member of the FSR. As a result, although the Republic of China has consistently opposed it, the Japanese were assisted in building a deterrent force in the late 1970s by Canada and Australia. Though, like Mexico, Japan recently enacted a unilateral moratorium on new atomic weapons construction, the government of Japan has not placed any limit on its nuclear forces per se, and the possibility of further expansion is likely to become an issue as the current warhead stockpile begins to age. In the absence of any international aggreement on arms reductions, Japan is likely to remain a major atomic power for some time to come.

AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION
DIPLOMATIC APPELLATION: Federated Commonwealth of Australia
CONVENTIONAL SHORT FORM: Australia
CAPITAL: Canberra, F.C.T.
LARGEST CITY: Sydney
AREA: 3,473,974 sq. mi. (not including Unincorporated Antarctic Territory)
POPULATION: 37.7 Million (1996 est.)
FORM OF GOVERNMENT: Nominal Constitutional Monarchy operating as De Facto Parliamentary Federal Democratic Republic
HEAD OF STATE: Monarch (de jure); Prime Minister (de facto, since 1981)
HEAD OF GOVERNMENT: Prime Minister (Note: since 1981, the Prime Minister has been de facto Head of State and Head of Government)
INDEPENDENCE: 1902 (Australian Home Rule Act)
ESTABLISHMENT: 1824 (Australian Federalisation Act)

Australia is the world’s largest producer of Uranium ore, but is not a major producer of fissile radioactives. Rather, Australia exports the majority of its ores to Japan, Indonesia, the Republic of China and the United States, where they are processed and enriched, and either passed on to other UNA atomic states, retained (in Japan and the USA) for domestic arms production, or returned to Australia for incorporation into more advanced weaponry. Australia’s relatively small strategic arsenal is somewhat deceptive: the nation is a leader in tactical atomic weapons, which are not counted in strategic terms. Australia is also a major producer of advanced bioinformatics, used in guidance systems of missiles and in gel computers. This gives Australia a major advantage that goes beyond its apparent numerical atomic capabilities by enhancing the weapons it does possess, making them far more accurate and able to be tuned to many different atomic yields. Uniquely for an atomic power, the Australian Federal Air Force is the only branch of the armed services of Australia permitted to handle or use atomics; where the Army or Navy use them, they do so under Air Force supervision.