Ronald Reagan explained his strategy was an arms buildup that would leave the Soviets far behind, with no choice but to negotiate arms reduction. Finally, displaying his characteristic optimism, he praised liberal democracy and promised that such a system eventually would triumph over Soviet communism. Reagan appreciated the revolutionary change in the direction of the Soviet policy with Mikhail Gorbachev, and shifted to diplomacy, with a view to encourage the Soviet leader to pursue substantial arms agreements. He and Gorbachev held four summit conferences between 1985 and 1988: the first in Geneva, Switzerland, the second in Reykjavík, Iceland, the third in Washington,
Political positions of Ronald Reagan nuclear weapon was unleashed, who knew where it would end? My dream, then, became a world free of nuclear weapons... For the eight years I was president I never let my dream of a nuclear-free world fade from my min.." Reagan wrote that he believed the mutually assured destruction policy formulated by John Kennedy to be morally wrong. Reagan and Soviet leader Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 1987 (and ratified in 1988), which was the first in Cold War history to mandate the destruction of an entire class of nuclear weapons. Originally neutral in the Iran–Iraq War