Washington Summit
Reagan and Gorbachev in theWhite House
Host country	United States
Date	December 8–10, 1987
Venue(s)	White House
Cities	Washington, D.C.
Participants	Mikhail Gorbachev Ronald Reagan
Follows	Reykjavík Summit
Precedes	Moscow Summit (1988)

TheWashington Summit of 1987 was aCold War-era meeting betweenUnited States presidentRonald Reagan andGeneral Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet UnionMikhail Gorbachev that took place on December 8–10. Reagan and Gorbachev discussed regional conflicts in Afghanistan, Central America, and Southern Africa,arms control issues for chemical weapons as well as conventional weapons, the status ofSTART negotiations, and human rights. A notable accomplishment of the Washington Summit was the signing of theIntermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty.

Following the near-breakthrough of the previous year'sReykjavik Summit, and much to the chagrin of many supporters of both leaders, Reagan and Gorbachev began putting resources into INF Treaty negotiations.^[1] This, in addition to various troubles foreign and domestic in both countries led to a tense time preceding the Washington Summit.

For Reagan, trouble withthe stock market, failure to win approval for Supreme-Court-nomineeRobert Bork,^[2] and theIran-Contra scandal^[3] were all generating political pressure. Also, criticism from an uncharacteristically large number of notable conservatives including former PresidentRichard Nixon, former Secretary of StateHenry Kissinger, commentatorWilliam Buckley, as well as members of his own administration resulted in a contentious political atmosphere around the INF Treaty.^[4]

Gorbachev too was encountering opposition, not only the INF treaty negotiations, but also hisPerestroika reform programs.^[5] Despite replacing over 150 senior defense ministers and officers after theMathias Rust incident,^[6] Gorbachev's frustrations were only compounded when just two months before the Washington Summit was held, then-candidate member of thePolitburo and supporter of Gorbachev,Boris Yeltsin, denounced the Soviet General Secretary and resigned from his post in an unprecedented and highly controversial move.^[7][8] Though, according to Reagan's Secretary of StateGeorge P. Shultz, the Soviet leader was unusually contentious during their late-October meeting in Moscow to finalize the terms of the INF treaty, "Shultz had barely unpacked his bags back in Washington before word came from Moscow that Gorbachev wanted the summit to take place soon.Shevardnadze would be in Washington within two days to see to the final details of the INF Treaty and the summit".^[9]

Thus, in spite of outside complications, by the time the summit was set to take place, most of the details relating the INF Treaty had already been worked out. At least a week before the meeting,The New York Times reported that "The Soviet leader and President Reagan are scheduled to sign a treaty Dec. 8 eliminating their nations' shorter-range and medium-range missiles", although the newspaper also said that discussion regarding "reducing long-range, strategic nuclear weapons" was encountering obstacles.^[10]

• List of Soviet Union–United States summits

• Cold War history of the Soviet Union
• Cold War history of the United States
• Foreign relations of the Soviet Union
• Soviet Union–United States diplomatic conferences
• 20th-century diplomatic conferences
• 1987 in international relations
• 1987 in the United States
• Diplomatic visits by heads of government
• 1987 in politics
• 1987 conferences
• Diplomatic visits to the United States
• 1987 in Washington, D.C.
• December 1987 in the United States
• Presidency of Ronald Reagan