The Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by USA and USSR leaders Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev in 1987.
When President Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981, he took a hard stance toward the Soviet Union. Where previous leaders of the nations had pursued detente and nuclear arms reduction, Reagan spoke of the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" and, in 1983, proposed a major new space-based missile defense program, the Strategic Defense initiative. But in 1985, the positions of the two countries began to shift again. In March 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed policies of perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union. In November 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev met in person for the first of several summit meetings they would have. In the summer of 1987, they worked out an agreement to eliminate intermediate and short-range missiles. They signed their agreement on December 8, 1987. According to the US State Department, at the time of the signing, the At the time of its signature, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty's "verification regime was the most detailed and stringent in the history of nuclear arms control, designed both to eliminate all declared Intermediate range nuclear forces systems entirely within three years."
