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
Ronald Reagan in music that reimagined hardcore without the anti-establishment ethos of punk rock. Some groups' stances on the president were a bit more ambiguous. When the drunk-rock group Murphy's Law praised Reagan and his films in their 1986 song "California Pipeline," fans could take it as either actual pro-Republican patriotism, or a tongue-in-cheek take on anti-Reagan irony. By the late 1980s, references to Reagan in hardcore music had become so commonplace that the joke was no longer on the president, but on a punk scene where bands were practically obliged to put a Reagan song on their setlist or album. As hip-hop came