Before 1986, a city named Reykjavík was best remembered for the “Match of the Century.” International eyes fixated on Iceland’s capital for the World Chess Championship of 1972. The American prodigy Bobby Fischer dethroned the USSR’s defending champ Boris Spassky, ending a quarter-century of Soviet chess domination. Meanwhile on the global chessboard, the Cold War, with its mind-boggling defense budgets and ICBM stockpiles, continued.

Fourteen years later, Reykjavík became synonymous with a different kind of U.S.-Soviet meeting with far greater stakes for humankind. The story of how President Ronald Reagan and General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev wound up there for two days of meetings 40 Octobers ago — and the progress they made toward a shared goal of eliminating nuclear bombs — should resonate in our dangerous age of nuclear tension and profligate weapons modernization .

Their efforts, however incomplete, remind us a better world is possible if leaders are willing to take chances, buck their foreign policy establishments, and speak truth about the madness of developing costly weapons that threaten human extinction.

Reykjavík wasn’t supposed to be a formal summit. A spy scandal almost prevented it. Reagan and Gorbachev ultimately failed to reach a breakthrough. Yet their efforts soon bore fruit. But first, why was distant Reykjavík chosen anyway?

“Halfway between us and them, and none of the big powers will be offended!” explained Gorbachev to his top foreign-policy adviser, Anatoly Chernyaev, in late summer 1986, according to the eminent chronicler of Soviet diplomatic history Archie Brown.

Gorbachev’s written invitation asked Reagan to come to “a quick one-on-one meeting … maybe just for one day, to engage in a strictly confidential, private, and frank discussion.” The Soviet premier insisted “all other matters” should be set aside. Other matters were indeed straining the relationship beyond arms control and either side’s tenuous adherence to existing nuclear treaties — not least the wars in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and Angola, as well as Reagan’s ongoing criticism of the USSR’s human rights record.

Then, in late August, the KGB arrested an unlucky American journalist named Nicholas Daniloff in Moscow, a blatant retaliation for the FBI’s arrest of a Soviet employee at the U.N. who was caught attempting to pry secrets from a U.S. defense contractor. Secretary of State George Shultz made clear to his Soviet counterpart that there’d be no meeting until “Daniloff was safely back in the United States,” noted Brown.

Daniloff was released , and the summit convened just 11 days later. “Both Reagan and Gorbachev (in sharp contrast with many senior officials in their administrations and the military in both their countries) were in favor, in principle, of getting rid of all nuclear weapons,” Brown tells Responsible Statecraft.

Reagan’s genuine abhorrence of nuclear weapons contradicted his reputation as a warmonger. His critics could caricature the American actor-turned-politician, but Reagan’s early hard-line gave the Kremlin legitimate reasons to distrust him, according to presidential historian Jeffrey Engel.

Reagan’s first term “was marked by belligerence, reckless rhetoric, military build-up, threats, and accusations,” Engel tells RS. “The second was a quest for better superpower relations… by the end of the first term he’d become aware of just how dangerous his own rhetoric was proving, and wanting a partner for peace, he merely had to wait until one appeared.” Gorbachev appeared in 1985, and one of his core foreign policy priorities would be to reduce the crushing weight of military spending on the Soviet economy.

On the afternoon of the second and final day at Reykjavík, the two leaders sought to break the limited framework of arms control for the uncharted, even radical territory of arms elimination , as described by historian Odd Arne Westad.

“Gorbachev decided to go all-out to break the dynamics of the arms race and prevent the militarization of space,” wrote Westad in his overview of the Cold War. He called for removing all U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range nuclear missiles from Europe, excepting British and French weapons. As for ICBMs, Gorbachev proposed a 50% reduction as long as Reagan agreed not to deploy his beloved Strategic Defense Initiative, which critics derisively labeled “Star Wars,” for the next decade.

Reagan responded with an even bigger idea: eliminate all ballistic missiles within ten years. Gorbachev pushed further: get rid of all nuclear weapons, not only the missiles. “But Reagan would not budge on SDI,” according to Westad, even though the satellite system was light years from being operable. (Space-based defense against ICBMs remains a fantasy to this day.)

“Reykjavík came unexpectedly close to an unexpectedly ambitious agreement,” read a State Department summary written immediately afterward, cited by Brown. The summit was not a failure, however, as the face-to-face meetings nurtured a rapport between the leaders and created momentum toward a deal.

In Washington on Dec. 8, 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty despite domestic criticism in both countries. It eliminated all U.S. and Soviet nuclear and conventional land-based ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500 kilometers.

“For the first time in history, the language of arms control was replaced by arms reduction,” Reagan announced. “Of course this required a dramatic shift in thinking and it took conventional wisdom some time to catch up. Reaction, to say the least, was mixed. To some, the ‘zero-option’ was impossibly visionary and unrealistic. To others, merely a propaganda ploy. But with patience, determination, and commitment, we’ve made this impossible vision a reality.”

The INF Treaty ushered in the high tide of arms reduction and detente, as the nightmare of nuclear apocalypse gave way to visions of a nuclear-free planet. With the Cold War effectively over, START I followed in July 1991, requiring major cuts to the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads. And for the next 20 years, a global non-proliferation consensus fostered several more pacts. The last major treaty was New START, signed by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in 2010.

The once-promising Reagan-Gorbachev idea is long dead. The U.S. and Russia possess more than 10,000 warheads, or roughly 87% percent of the world’s total and many more than necessary to destroy the Earth several times over. No bilateral treaties limiting the U.S. and Russian arsenals remain in effect, and new countries may be verging on going nuclear.

“The breakdown in arms control after 2010 mirrors the deterioration in the U.S.-Russian relationship caused primarily by differences over Ukraine,” historian and Kennan Institute director Michael Kimmage tells RS. Washington and Moscow cannot afford to have short memories: “Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union impoverished themselves, in different ways, through Cold War military spending… Today, the image of great powers as fundamentally unable to communicate with one another is a metaphor… with any number of ominous implications.”

Faced with a future of nuclear anarchy, the world would be wise to recommit itself to achieving Gorbachev’s vision, which he shared upon signing the INF Treaty.

“May December 8, 1987, become a date that will be inscribed in the history books, a date that will mark the watershed separating the era of a mounting risk of nuclear war from the era of a demilitarization of human life.”