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
Iceland in the Cold War as a country where communists were capable of inflicting moderate damage, but not as a country where communists were capable of violently overthrowing the government. The US and USSR competed for influence in Iceland, in particular during the late 1940s and 1950s. Iceland traded considerably with the USSR for the first few decades of the Cold War. The US provided Iceland with extensive economic and diplomatic backing throughout the Cold War. During the Proto-Cod War of 1952-1956, the USSR and the US unburdened Iceland of much of the fish left unsold by the British landing ban during the dispute. A