Iceland in the Cold War Iceland in the Cold War Throughout the Cold War, the nation of Iceland was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and allied with the United States, hosting a US military presence in Keflavík Air Base from 1951 to 2006. In 1986, Iceland hosted a summit in Reykjavík between United States President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev, during which they took significant steps toward nuclear disarmament. Five years later, in 1991, Iceland became the first country to recognize the renewed independence of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania when they broke away from the Soviet Union. Early in
1989 Sino-Soviet Summit though Gorbachev did not say it directly during the Summit or afterward, he sympathized with the protestors as they were pushing for the political changes that Gorbachev had implemented in the Soviet Union. 1989 Sino-Soviet Summit The four-day Sino-Soviet Summit was held in Beijing from May 15–18, 1989. This would be the first formal meeting between the Soviet Communist leader and the Chinese Communist leader since the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s. The last Soviet leader to visit China was Nikita Khrushchev in September 1959. Both Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader of China, and Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the