Reagan Meets Gorbachev: Cold War Thaws in Reykjavik

Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev came closer to eliminating nuclear weapons than any two leaders in history — and walked away with nothing. The Reykjavik Summit of October 11-12, 1986, was supposed to be a modest working meeting to prepare for a future formal summit. Instead, it became the most dramatic and consequential arms negotiation of the Cold War. Gorbachev arrived with proposals that stunned American negotiators. He offered to cut all strategic nuclear arsenals by 50 percent within five years and eliminate all ballistic missiles within ten years. Reagan, whose personal hatred of nuclear weapons was often underestimated by his own advisors, responded by suggesting they go further and eliminate all nuclear weapons entirely. For a few extraordinary hours, the two most powerful men on Earth seriously discussed abolishing the entire nuclear arsenal of both superpowers. The talks collapsed over a single issue: Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the satellite-based missile defense system critics called "Star Wars." Gorbachev insisted that SDI testing be confined to laboratories. Reagan refused to abandon the program. Secretary of State George Shultz emerged from the final session visibly shaken. "We are deeply disappointed," he told reporters, his voice breaking. Yet the apparent failure at Reykjavik proved transformative. Both leaders had revealed their willingness to pursue radical arms reduction, and that genie could not be put back in the bottle. The discussions laid the groundwork for the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, the first agreement to actually eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons. Arms control experts now regard Reykjavik not as a failure but as the turning point that made the peaceful end of the Cold War possible.