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Cuba and the Cold War
At the height of the Cold War, on 1 January 1959, a guerrilla army led by Fidel Castro defeated the US-backed Batista government. Attempts by the US government to undermine Castro's new administration, coupled with similarities of ideology, pushed Cuba into the arms of the Soviet Union. So began years of dangerous political manoeuvring that culminated in the 1962 missile crisis and the day the world came close to nuclear war.
