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
Origins of the Cold War and the Cold War was largely in place in Europe. Outside Europe, the starting points vary in the late 1940s or early 1950s. Events preceding World War II and even the Russian Revolution of 1917, underlay older tensions between the Soviet Union, European countries and the United States. A series of events during and after World War II exacerbated tensions, including the Soviet–German pact in 1939, the Anglo-Americans repeated postponement of an amphibious invasion of German-occupied Europe, the Western allies' support of the Atlantic Charter, Soviet rejection of decisions about Eastern European democracy made in wartime conferences and the Kremlin's