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
Historiography of the Cold War expansionism in the immediate years following World War II. Bailey argued Joseph Stalin violated promises he had made at the Yalta Conference, imposed Soviet-dominated regimes on unwilling Eastern European populations and conspired to spread communism throughout the world. From that view, American officials were forced to respond to Soviet aggression with the Truman Doctrine, plans to contain communist subversion around the world and the Marshall Plan. Another prominent "orthodox" historian was Herbert Feis, who in his works like "Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin" and "From Trust to Terror: The Onset of the Cold War" stated similar views. According to him, Soviet aggression