Reykjavik Summit 1986: Reagan, Gorbachev and the Word That Sank Zero Nukes

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In mid-September 1986 Mikhail Gorbachev wrote to Ronald Reagan proposing a quick meeting in Iceland, and in October the two leaders sat down at Höfði House in Reykjavik, just after the spy cases of journalist Nicholas Daniloff and physicist Gennady Zakharov ended in releases without charges. Gorbachev, facing a Soviet economy drained by military spending and shaken by the Chernobyl disaster six months earlier, came for arms control, while Reagan pressed on the emigration of Soviet Jews and the war in Afghanistan. Gorbachev accepted the double zero plan for intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe, offered 50 percent cuts in strategic arms including heavy ICBMs, and stopped insisting that British and French weapons be counted.

The talks escalated from eliminating all ballistic missiles within ten years to eliminating all nuclear weapons, then collapsed over Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative. Gorbachev demanded that SDI research stay confined to the laboratory for a decade, Reagan refused and offered to share the technology, and the leaders left with nothing signed. The press called it a failure, yet both sides had seen what the other would concede, human rights entered the bilateral agenda, and Gorbachev accepted on-site inspections. That groundwork produced the INF Treaty, signed at the Washington Summit in December 1987.

• Reagan had first proposed the double zero option in 1981, expecting Moscow to refuse it.
• Gorbachev retorted that the Americans would not even share oil drilling technology with the Soviets.
• Ambassador Jack Matlock later argued that a ten-year lab limit would not have hurt the early-stage SDI program.
• The Soviets had refused on-site inspections in the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty and the 1972 ABM and SALT I agreements.
• A 2026 film, The Brink of War, casts Jeff Daniels as Reagan and Jared Harris as Gorbachev.