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
Cold War liberal Cold War liberal Cold War liberal is a term that was used most commonly in the United States during the Cold War, which began at the end of World War II. The term was used to describe liberal politicians and labor union leaders who supported democracy and equality. They supported the growth of labor unions, the civil rights movement, and the War on Poverty, while simultaneously opposing totalitarianism and Communist Party rule. Cold-War liberals therefore supported efforts to contain Soviet communism. U.S. liberalism of the Cold War era was the immediate heir to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and the