Cold War to the Kremlin's military and political concessions, Reagan agreed to renew talks on economic issues and the scaling-back of the arms race. The first summit was held in November 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland. At one stage the two men, accompanied only by an interpreter, agreed in principle to reduce each country's nuclear arsenal by 50 percent. A second summit, was held in October 1986, Reykjavík, Iceland. Talks went well until the focus shifted to Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, which Gorbachev wanted eliminated. Reagan refused. The negotiations failed, but the third summit in 1987 led to a breakthrough with the
1989 Sino-Soviet Summit massive student protests in the Chinese capital. Nonetheless, neither side proposed to postpone or reschedule the meeting. Gorbachev refused to pass judgement on the student protests in hopes that the Chinese leaders and the student protesters would resolve their differences by themselves. Even though the demonstrations disrupted the reception of the Soviet delegation and many of the social events of the visit were cancelled, Gorbachev was still very pleased with the reception in Beijing as well as the summit as a whole as he was able to accomplish his goal of normalizing relations. According to political scientist, William Taubman, even