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
Mark Phillips (journalist) in 1982, Phillips moved to the United States, and joined CBS News as a reporter for the network's London bureau and covered events throughout Europe, the Middle East and Africa. That same year, Phillips became the 1st non-British correspondent to report from the Falkland Islands during the British military's conflict in Argentina. From 1984 to 1986, Phillips was promoted to correspondent and assigned to the CBS News bureau in Moscow, where he covered 3 Soviet leaders: Yuri Andropov, Konstainin Chernenko and Mikhail Gorbachev—as well as the Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Moscow and the resumption of the U.S.-Soviet arms talk. From 1986