2006 Reykjavik Summit 20th Anniversary Conference

October 1, 2006

Palo Alto, California

Hoover Institution

At their October 1986 meeting in Reykjavik, Iceland, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev agreed on the need to eliminate nuclear weapons. That historic meeting ultimately helped lead to the end of the Cold War. "Since that time, the nature of the nuclear threat in the world has changed, but the 20-year-old lessons of Reykjavik may well help us achieve the goal of a modern world free of nuclear weapons," said former Secretary of State George P. Shultz.

1986 Reykjavik Summit

October 12, 1986

Reykjavik, Iceland

The work of the Nuclear Security Project builds on the historic 1986 Reykjavik Summit, when President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland and discussed an agreement to eliminate all U.S. and (then) Soviet nuclear weapons. While an agreement on total elimination was not reached at Reykjavik, the summit is widely recognized as marking a major turning point in relations between the United States and the Soviet Union and their 40-year Cold War nuclear confrontation.