Chapter 2. The Reykjavik summit, 1986

• Main Authors: Savranskaya, Svetlana, Blanton, Thomas
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: Central European University Press 2018
• Subjects: Soviet Union; foreign relations; United States; great powers; History; International Relations; HIS032000; HIS037070; POL011010; HBJD; HBLW; JPSD; Iceland
• Online Access: http://books.openedition.org/ceup/3209

The Reagan-Gorbachev meeting at Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986 may well rank as “the most bizarre summit in the history of the Cold War.” The superpowers did not even intend the event to be a “summit.” The two leaders had almost immediately agreed at Geneva in November 1985 to host each other for two reciprocal summits in the next two years, one in Washington and one in Moscow. But in late 1985 and throughout 1986, U.S.-Soviet relations suffered from waterfalls of controversies, injury b.