Ken Adelman accompanied President Ronald Reagan in October, 1986, to Reykjavik for the summit on nuclear arms limitations with Mikhail Gorbachev. He wrote a book just a couple of years ago about Reagan at Reykjavik. Being fifteen years old at the time, it was fascinating to read his book about people that I vaguely remember hearing about on television.
Many people believed the summit at Reykjavik was a failure, especially in its immediate aftermath. But, Adelman reports from an insider’s perspective, it was very much a success and contributed significantly to the end of the Cold War.
Up until Reykjavik, America and Russia had a foreign policy nicknamed MAD, for Mutually Assured Destruction. The idea was that if both countries had enough nuclear weapons, if one launched a strike, the other would retaliate in kind. The idea that each country could destroy the other was believed to keep the the prospect of war at bay. President Reagan believed MAD was, well, mad. He believed that each country should completely end their nuclear weapons program. Until Reykjavik, no one believed that policy could be a reality. It is not a reality, even today, but the relationship between America and Russia improved greatly after Reykjavik.
At Reykjavik, Gorbachev agreed to drastic reductions in arms, pulling them out of Europe and Asia. That was a tremendous win. The reason so many people believed Reykjavik was a failure was because Reagan believed in and wanted to deploy a missile defense system (called Strategic Defense Initiative, SDI for short, or nicknamed Star Wars). Reagan wanted to share that technology with the Russians. He compared it to the use of gas masks against poison gas following World War I. Poison gases were outlawed but we still have gas masks.
Gorbachev’s Soviet Union could not afford to keep up with the U. S. economically in its pursuit of SDI. He refused to negotiate and linked the SDI with all his weapons reductions to which he had previously agreed. That is what led to the “failure” at Reykjavik.
Eventually, Gorbachev decided to unlink SDI from the other reductions and a historic summit was held in Washington, D. C. in 1987. But, those agreements were begun at Reykjavik.
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Adelman also suggests that Reykjavik was an impetus to the end of the Cold War as Gorbachev opened up Russian markets and its political system. In the summer of 1987, President Reagan called on Gorbachev to “Tear down this [Berlin] Wall.” Gorbachev continued to open Russia up and loosened its grasp on the Soviet satellite countries. The “Iron Curtain” fell in 1989.
It was then that the former Soviet satellite country, Romania, opened up. Communism came to an end in Romania in 1989. The Lord’s church entered the country in 1990. Our mission team paid a visit in 1997 and moved there in 2000. The Lord’s church has shared the gospel in numerous cities, counties, and hearts throughout Romania since 1990. Many souls have been saved, hearts touched, and lives changed since 1990.
Romania opened up to the Lord’s work because the Iron Curtain fell. The Iron Curtain fell because of the wisdom of Mikail Gorbachev. Gorbachev’s wisdom grew out of his experiences, in part, with Ronald Reagan and Reykjavik.
God reigns in the affairs of men (Dan. 4:17). He sets up over nations whom He desires. He has a plan. He wants all men to be saved. He’ll open countries at the right time, in the right way. That’s one more reason we should pray for our country’s leaders and the leaders of other nations, even Arabic and Muslim countries.
–Paul Holland
