Reykjavik Summit

The Event Meeting between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev over arms control and other issues

Date October 11-12, 1986

Place Höfði House, Reykjavik, Iceland

U.S. and Soviet leaders met at this groundbreaking summit that many participants believed was a key turning point in the Cold War. While in the end the two sides were unable to agree upon final terms for the elimination of nuclear weapons, the negotiations at Reykjavik eventually led to crucial agreements on intermediate-range and strategic nuclear force reductions.

The summit meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, between U.S. president Ronald Reagan and Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev on October 11-12, 1986, followed from their first meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1985. Though no arms control agreements were initialed at Geneva, the two leaders of the world’s most powerful states did declare that a nuclear war could not be won by either side and that such a war should never be fought.

After President Reagan made an impassioned speech for a nuclear arms reduction accord before the United Nations in September of 1986, General Secretary Gorbachev extended an offer for the two leaders to meet in October, 1986, in either Iceland or the United Kingdom. In the end, Reykjavik was established as the meeting place for what was billed as an informal těte-à-těte.

The talks began early on the morning of Saturday, October 11; as agreed, the negotiations were to be wide-ranging, covering four major thematic areas: arms control, regional issues, bilateral issues (such as Jewish and dissident emigration from the Soviet Union), and human rights. However, in the final analysis, most commentators and journalists would report that the primary importance of Reykjavik was the sweeping deliberations over nuclear arms control issues.

Indeed, Gorbachev came to Reykjavik having realized the need to end both the superpower arms race and the ideological conflict with the Western Bloc, as the rapidly declining Soviet economy was in dire need of reform. Gorbachev soon showed his hand, arguing in the opening sessions that the two countries should agree to a 50 percent reduction in strategic nuclear arms, a total elimination of all intermediate-range missiles deployed in Europe, compulsory nonwithdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty for a period of ten years, and a complete ban on the testing of space-based antiballistic defensive weapons, except in laboratories. On October 12, Gorbachev sweetened the deal by proposing to limit all intermediate-range missiles in the Soviet and American arsenals to one hundred.

In the final, dramatic hours of the summit, Gorbachev remarked to Reagan that he wanted to rid their countries’ nuclear arsenals of all strategic forces, not merely ballistic missiles. To that, Reagan responded that he would agree to the elimination of all nuclear arms, be they strategic, intermediate-range, or tactical nuclear weaponry. It appeared that a major, far-reaching compact on nuclear disarmament was within sight.

Negotiations Break Down

In the final hour, however, the talks collapsed when Gorbachev insisted that Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—a space-based, antiballistic defensive weapons system unveiled in March, 1983, in order to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete”—be limited to research and testing in a laboratory setting. The Soviet leadership believed that the SDI program was being developed in order to give the United States a first-strike capability and to take the arms race into outer space, not to provide a protective shield against nuclear attack as the Reagan administration claimed. Reagan would not agree to limiting research, development, and testing of the system within the framework of the ABM Treaty, arguing that the SDI program was the best insurance policy against the Soviet Union reneging on arms reduction commitments. Thus, the failure to find common ground on defensive antiballistic systems caused the summit to end without any agreement on nuclear arms control.

Impact

Although the Reykjavik Summit ended without the signing of an arms control treaty, the meeting was of fundamental importance, as the sweeping negotiations advanced the arms control agenda significantly. Important breakthroughs made at Reykjavik enabled the two leaders to sign an Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty the following year at their third summit meeting, in Washington, D.C. This accord was groundbreaking: For the first time ever, an entire class of nuclear weapons was eliminated from U.S. and Soviet arsenals. Likewise, the Reykjavik discussions on strategic nuclear forces eventually culminated in the first Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (1991), the first arms agreement signed by the two superpowers that eliminated strategic nuclear arms.

Another rarely discussed outcome of the Reykjavik Summit—one secured by the United States—was the commitment made by the Soviets to have an ongoing discussion on human rights issues. Perhaps the most significant result of Reykjavik was that the meeting led to a greater level of trust between the two superpowers; indeed, Gorbachev later claimed that Reykjavik was the key turning point in the Cold War, as it was the first time the leaders of the two states met over an extended period of time and talked about all outstanding issues of concern.

Bibliography

Beschloss, Michael R., and Strobe Talbott. At the Highest Levels: The Inside Story of the Cold War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993. A historian and a journalist team up to examine the causes, consequences, and denouement of the Cold War.

Goodby, James E. At the Borderline of Armageddon: How American Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb. Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. As a participant in the arms control negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union in the early 1980’s, Goodby examines the negotiating positions, strategies, and achievements of past U.S. presidents.

Gorbachev, Mikhail S. Memoirs. New York: Doubleday, 1996. In this wide-ranging autobiography, Gorbachev discusses his rise to power, meetings with global leaders, and the fall of the Soviet Union and communism.

Shultz, George P. Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993. As secretary of state under Reagan, Shultz played a significant role in the five summit meetings held between Reagan and Gorbachev. In this book, Shultz recounts his role in these negotiations and the opportunities that were opened by them.