Iceland in the Cold War the military protection of the United States, even if the economic benefits of the US military presence are gone. With the withdrawal of US forces, the country's military co-operation with other allied NATO countries, such as Norway, has increased. 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,
Iceland in the Cold War the Cold War shaped Icelandic politics for the next decades. A sense of greater global turmoil and internal threat led Icelandic statesmen to reconsider Iceland's security arrangements. The Czechoslovak coup d'état in February 1948 made the world seem less peaceful and made a communist coup in Iceland seem plausible. The Icelandic coalition government of the Independence Party, the centrist Progressive Party and the Social Democrats began to look for security guarantees for Iceland. Basing US military forces on Icelandic soil was considered domestically unfeasible at the time, so the options were between a Scandinavian Defence Union and NATO. When negotiations