美國在小布希與歐巴馬兩任政府主政時期，對馬來西亞的政策出現顯著差異。當前多數文獻以「雙邊─多邊」或「軍事─經濟」的兩組對照作為比較基礎，而本文在具體耙梳兩屆政府在美馬經貿與安全合作的政策異同之後，發現上述兩組對照分析模式有過於簡化之嫌，因此提出以外交取向的本質作為出發點，深入研究小布希與歐巴馬政府對馬政策的異同。以美馬反恐和南海議題上的合作為案例進行分析之後，本文發現小布希政府的對馬政策是功能取向的，因此著重對馬政策的工具性與利益界定，導致雙邊關係發展受限於特定議題的影響而難有進展。與之對照，歐巴馬政府的對馬政策是關係取向的，強調多種議題同時發展，而力求雙邊關係的協調與平衡，所以即便在特定議題存在歧見，但因其對馬政策面向廣泛，終能突破既有限制，成為真正的夥伴關係。

Since the Obama administration initiated the “Rebalancing toward Asia” policy, development of US-Malaysia relationship has been one of the crucial topics. Many researchers have suggested that Obama’s policy toward Malaysia is more successful than that of Bush’s, and most works have followed the framework of “bilateralism vs. multilateralism” and “security- oriented vs. economy-oriented” to make a strategic comparison. This article examines such frameworks and argues that they are oversimplified to attribute the differences to simple dichotomies. Instead, this article proposes an approach to investigate both administrations’ foreign policy orientations and diverse essences of Bush and Obama’s Malaysia policies. The main argument of this article suggests that Bush’s Malaysia policy is function- oriented, while Obama’s is relationship-oriented. The different orientations of their policies led to the different focus in their attitudes and strategies in managing the US-Malaysia relationship, which also explains the more successful policy of the Obama administration.