This book publishes for the first time in print every word the American and Soviet leaders – Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and George H.W. Bush – said to each other in their superpower summits from 1985 to 1991. Obtained by the authors through the Freedom of Information Act in the U.S., from the Gorbachev Foundation and the State Archive of the Russian Federation in Moscow, and from the personal donation of Anatoly Chernyaev, these previously Top Secret verbatim transcripts combine with key declassified preparatory and after-action documents from both sides to create a unique interactive documentary record of these historic highest-level talks – the conversations that ended the Cold War. The summits fueled a process of learning on both sides, as the authors argue in contextual essays on each summit and detailed headnotes on each document. Geneva 1985 and Reykjavik 1986 reduced Moscow's sense of threat and unleashed Reagan's inner abolitionist. Malta 1989 and Washington 1990 helped dampen any superpower sparks that might have flown in a time of revolutionary change in Eastern Europe, set off by Gorbachev and by Eastern Europeans (Solidarity, dissidents, reform Communists). The high level and scope of the dialogue between these world leaders was unprecedented, and is likely never to be repeated.

“[Matlock’s] account of Reagan’s achievement as the nation’s diplomat in chief is a public service.”—The New York Times Book Review “Engrossing . . . authoritative . . . a detailed and reliable narrative that future historians will be able to draw on to illuminate one of the most dramatic periods in modern history.”—Los Angeles Times Book Review In Reagan and Gorbachev, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to the U.S.S.R. and principal adviser to Ronald Reagan on Soviet and European affairs, gives an eyewitness account of how the Cold War ended. Working from his own papers, recent interviews with major figures, and unparalleled access to the best and latest sources, Matlock offers an insider’s perspective on a diplomatic campaign far more sophisticated than previously thought, waged by two leaders of surpassing vision. Matlock details how Reagan privately pursued improved U.S.-U.S.S.R. relations even while engaging in public saber rattling. When Gorbachev assumed leadership, however, Reagan and his advisers found a willing partner in peace. Matlock shows how both leaders took risks that yielded great rewards and offers unprecedented insight into the often cordial working relationship between Reagan and Gorbachev. Both epic and intimate, Reagan and Gorbachev will be the standard reference on the end of the Cold War, a work that is critical to our understanding of the present and the past.

Recounts six summits which had a significant political impact during the twentieth century, including the Yalta summit in 1945 with Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, and the Geneva summit in 1985 with Gorbachev and Reagan.

In 1989 and 1990 the map of Europe was transformed peacefully, without the wars which caused the other great ruptures of the international order in 1815, 1870, 1918, and 1945. What role did international summitry play in the denouement of the Cold War? Scholars have tended to focus on long-term systemic factors, Gorbachev's reform agenda, or the impact in 1989 of 'people power'. This major multinational study, based on archives from both sides of the 'Iron Curtain', adopts a novel perspective by exploring the contribution of international statecraft to the dissolution of Europe's bipolar order. This is done through the examination of key summit meetings from 1970 to 1990 across three phases - 'Thawing the Cold War', 'Living with the Cold War', and 'Transcending the Cold War' - and in three main strands: the superpowers and arms control, their triangular relationship with China, and the German question. The threads are drawn together in a sweeping analytical conclusion. Transcending the Cold War includes fascinating insights into key statesman such as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, Leonid Brezhnev and Mikhail Gorbachev, Willy Brandt and Helmut Kohl, Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping - both as thinkers about the international system and also practitioners of summit bargaining. Particular attention is devoted to the cultural dimension of summitry, as performative acts for the media and as engagement with 'the Other' across ideological divides. Written in lively prose, this volume is essential reading for those interested in modern history, contemporary politics, and international relations - addressing issues that still shape the world today.

The dramatic, first-hand account of the historic 1986 Reagan-Gorbachev summit in Iceland—the definitive weekend that was the key turning point in the Cold War—by President Reagan’s arms control director, Ken Adelman. In October 1986, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met for a forty-eight-hour summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Planned as a short, inconsequential gathering to outline future talks, the meeting quickly turned to major international issues, including the strategic defense initiative and the possibility of eliminating all nuclear weapons—negotiations that laid the groundwork for the most sweeping arms accord in history the following year. Scrupulously researched and based on now-declassified information, Reagan at Reykjavik tells the gripping tale of this weekend that changed the world. Filled with illustrative accounts of the private discussions between Reagan and his team, Ken Adelman provides an honest and up-close portrait of President Reagan at one of his finest and most challenging moments. Reagan at Reykjavik includes 16 pages of black-and-white photos and 11 illustrations.

The idea of non-alignment and peaceful coexistence was not new when Yugoslavia hosted the Belgrade Summit of the Non-Aligned in September 1961. Freedom activists from the colonies in Asia, Africa, and South America had been discussing such issues for decades already, but this long-lasting context is usually forgotten in political and historical assessments of the Non-Aligned Movement. This book puts the Non-Aligned Movement into its wider historical context and sheds light on the long-term connections and entanglements of the Afro-Asian world. It assembles scholars from differing fields of research, such as Asian Studies, Eastern European and Southeast European History, Cold War Studies, Middle Eastern Studies and International Relations. In doing so, this volume looks back to the ideological beginnings of the concept of peaceful coexistence at the time of the anticolonial movements, and at the multi-faceted challenges of foreign policy the former freedom fighters faced when they established their own decolonized states. It analyses the crucial role Yugoslav president Tito played in his determination to keep his country out of the blocs, and finally examines the main achievement of the Non-Aligned Movement: to give subordinate states of formerly subaltern peoples a voice in the international system. An innovative look at the Non-Aligned Movement with a strong historical component, the book will be of great interest to academics working in the field of International Affairs, international history of the 20th century, the Cold War, Race Relations as well as scholars interested in Asian, African and Eastern European history.