Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev went to Iceland in October 1986 expecting two days of talks. By the end of the weekend, the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union were discussing something almost unthinkable at the height of the Cold War: getting rid of their nuclear weapons. Unfortunately, for the world, the deal fell apart.
That historical weekend is the subject of The Brink of War, a new political drama opening in theaters Aug. 14. Jeff Daniels plays Reagan opposite Jared Harris as Gorbachev, with J.K. Simmons as Secretary of State George Shultz and Hope Davis as Nancy Reagan. Michael Russell Gunn wrote and directed the film, which Angel Studios is distributing.
The movie turns the 1986 Reykjavík Summit into a political thriller, but the nuclear brinkmanship at its center requires surprisingly little Hollywood help.
Declassified State Department records from the meeting show Reagan and Gorbachev discussing cuts that went far beyond the arms-control agreements either country had previously accepted.
At one point, Reagan asked whether the proposals under discussion could eventually mean reducing all nuclear weapons, including cruise missiles, battlefield weapons and submarine-launched weapons.
Gorbachev replied that they could eliminate them. Shultz’s response was even shorter: “Let’s do it.”
That exchange helps explain why Reykjavík still fascinates Cold War historians 40 years later.
They Got Much Further Than Expected
Reagan arrived in Iceland after years of publicly calling for major nuclear reductions while also overseeing a U.S. military buildup. Gorbachev had proposed eliminating nuclear weapons by the year 2000 earlier in 1986.
What began as another meeting between two adversaries quickly moved into details neither side expected to settle that weekend.
The two sides reached broad agreement on cutting strategic nuclear forces by 50% over five years. They also made major progress toward eliminating U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Gorbachev told Reagan that the Soviet Union was prepared to accept stringent verification as the reductions moved forward. Soon, discussions grew more ambitious.
Reagan proposed eliminating U.S. and Soviet ballistic missiles over 10 years. The talks also veered into the possibility of eliminating nuclear weapons.
However, American and Soviet negotiators did not always mean precisely the same thing when discussing which weapons would disappear and on what timetable.
Reagan Wouldn’t Give Up ‘Star Wars’
Gorbachev wanted Reagan to restrict the Strategic Defense Initiative, the missile-defense program commonly known as “Star Wars.”
Reagan had announced SDI in 1983 as an effort to develop defenses capable of intercepting incoming ballistic missiles.
To Gorbachev, a functioning American missile shield threatened to upset the nuclear balance. If Washington could defend itself against Soviet missiles while Moscow remained vulnerable, massive offensive reductions suddenly looked much riskier from the Soviet side.
At Reykjavík, Gorbachev wanted both countries to remain bound by the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty for 10 years and sought to limit SDI work during that period to laboratory research. However, President Reagan refused.
In an address to Americans after returning from Iceland, Reagan said accepting Gorbachev’s condition would have effectively killed SDI. He was willing to delay deploying a missile-defense system while nuclear weapons were being destroyed, but he would not accept the Soviet restriction on developing and testing it.
The summit ended without the sweeping agreement both leaders had come close to reaching.
For The Brink of War, that is where the drama lives. Daniels told Vanity Fair that he knew relatively little about Reykjavík before taking the role and spent months studying Reagan’s mannerisms and preparing the dialogue-heavy part. He said the nuclear problem at the center of the film remained relevant to him four decades later.
The failure at Reykjavík also turned out to be less final than it looked. Reagan and Gorbachev kept negotiating. On Dec. 8, 1987, they signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty at the White House.
The agreement eliminated an entire class of U.S. and Soviet ground-launched missiles, something no previous nuclear arms treaty had accomplished. Still, the two countries never reached the far larger goal discussed in Iceland.
The Brink of War opens in theaters Aug. 14.
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