%T Beyond containment? The first Bush administration's sceptical approach to the CSCE %O © 2013 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. %P 1 - 22 %D 2013 %L discovery1405706 %N 4 %J Cold War History %V 13 %A SB Snyder %X This article analyses the first Bush administration's policy toward the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), finding that as with Soviet-American relations and US policy toward Eastern Europe, the administration diverged from the foreign policy of its predecessor. Whereas previously the CSCE had been a forum to encourage progress on human rights, promote reform in Eastern Europe, and encourage cooperation with the Soviet Union, under Bush it became a tool to manage the transformation of Europe and preserve the Atlantic alliance. This new approach was guided by uncertainty about the CSCE's usefulness as a multilateral forum, scepticism about Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms, and a preference for stability.