ABSTRACT
I n January 1985, at the height of the cold war, Mikhail Gorbachev, secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, sent an intriguing letter to President Ronald Reagan of the United States of America. In it, he proposed the complete elimination, within 15 years, of the thousands of nuclear missiles that the two countries had pointed at each other. Fueled somewhat by public relations motives, offers and counteroffers began flying between the two countries, but progress was so marked and potentially so real that the two sides agreed to meet for two days face-to-face in Hofdi House, a villa outside of Reykjavik, Iceland.
