Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev once said, "If you live among wolves, you have to act like a wolf." That is certainly how the conflicting countries of the Cold War acted. In Cuba, Fulgencio Batista ruled as a tyrant and was very unpopular among his people. Protests and other rebellious acts turned into a famous revolution, known as the Cuban Revolution, lead by Fidel Castro. As for the Middle East, there was an Egyptian-Syrian union, an Iraq Revolution, and a civil unrest in Lebanon. The international organization, METO, soon had to step in. The Vietnam War was also occurring at the time. It was a based on a struggle between nationalist forces attempting to unify the country of Vietnam under a communist government and the United States attempting to prevent the spread of communism. Between the United States and the Soviet Union, they were continuous enemies. The United States was pro-capitalism and the Soviet Union was pro-communism. With all these controversies leading up to 1959, because of the Cuban Revolution, Iraq leaving the Baghdad Pact, the first American soldiers to die in the Vietnam War, the Kitchen Debate, and Khrushchev's rejection to access Disneyland, 1959 was a very warm year.