Cuba’s Castro regime did more than reorient the country’s entire economic, social, and political systems. It birthed an activist foreign policy that saw the little nation play a large role in the world—the effects of which we are still living with today.

The Castro government uses its spy service — the Dirección de Inteligencia (DI), formerly the Dirrección General de Inteligencia (DGI) — to project power far from Cuban shores. Like its Soviet forebears, under whose auspices it was created in 1961, Castro’s intelligence services bolstered terrorist groups.