As it became more closely allied with the Soviet Union, Cuba became a focal point of the Cold War. The Cold War got hot in Cuba in 1961, when the United States backed a paramilitary invasion of Cuba. The invaders were Cuban expatriates who had been armed, equipped, and trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The invasion was supposed to induce the Cuban people to rise up against Castro, but as historian John C. Chasteen notes, "despite their hopes, the antiCastro Cubans who landed at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 sparked no internal rebellion." Instead, the invasion bogged down on the beaches of Playa Giron on the Bay of Pigs. After three days of intense fighting, the invaders, who were promised U.S. air support but never received it, were driven off the island by the Cuban military. In...