<DIV><DIV><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 3pt">Reflecting on Cuba&#8217;s&nbsp;unique foreign policy&#8212;both its meaning and its legacy&#8212;and how&nbsp;Cuba has adjusted to a world dominated by the United States, Piero Gleijeses asserts in <I>The Cuban Drumbeat </I>that it has been a policy without equal in modern times. During the cold war, extra-continental military interventions were the preserve of the two superpowers, a few West European countries, and Cuba. Gleijeses documents how the rest of the world was regularly stunned by Cuba&#8217;s massive uses of force, including the 1975&#8211;76 dispatch of 36,000 Cuban soldiers to Angola to repel a South African invasion, the 12,000 Cuban soldiers sent to Ethiopia in 1978 to help defeat a Somali invasion, and the 55,000 Cuban soldiers present in Angola by 1988. Even the Soviet Union sent far fewer troops beyond its immediate borders in those years than did Cuba.&nbsp; </P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 3pt">&nbsp;</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 3pt"><I>The Cuban Drumbeat</I> describes how the cold war framed three decades of Castro&#8217;s revolutionary zeal; but, Gleijeses argues, Castro&#8217;s vision was always larger than the cold war.&nbsp; For Castro, the battle against imperialism&#8212;his <I>raison d</I>&#8217;<I>&#234;tre</I>&#8212;is more than the struggle against the United States: it is the war against despair and oppression in the Third World&#8212;a war that continues even though the future of Castro&#8217;s policies is uncertain.</P><P style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt">&nbsp;</P></DIV></DIV>