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
Moscow Summit (1988) lesser issues such as student exchanges and fishing rights. A significant result was the updating of Soviet history books, which necessitated cancelling some history classes in Soviet secondary schools. In the end, Reagan expressed satisfaction with the summit. Reagan and Gorbachev eventually issued a joint statement, of which excerpts are shown here: One ironic instance of the summit was when Reagan gave Gorbachev a copy of the movie "Friendly Persuasion", whose screenwriter Michael Wilson got blacklisted in the 1950s due to suspected communist sympathies. Moscow Summit (1988) The Moscow Summit was a summit meeting between U.S. Pres. Ronald Reagan and