Time to Cooperate With China Cooperation is not cowardice.

• Author: Sachs, Jeffrey D.

American foreign policy since World War II has been based on a simple idea, perhaps best expressed by President George W Bush after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks: Either you are with us or against us. America should lead, allies should follow, and woe be to countries that oppose its primacy.

The idea was both simple and simplistic. And now it is antiquated: The United States faces no implacable foes, no longer leads an overpowering alliance, and has far more to gain from cooperation with China and other countries than from confrontation. Former President Donald Trump was a grotesque caricature of U.S. leadership. He hurled insults, threats, unilateral tariffs, and financial sanctions to try to force other countries to submit to his policies. He ripped up the multilateral rulebook. Yet Trump's foreign policy faced remarkably little pushback inside the United States. There was more consensus than opposition to Trump's anti-China policies, and little resistance to his sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, despite their catastrophic humanitarian consequences.

President Joe Biden's foreign policy is a godsend in comparison. Already, the United States has rejoined the Paris climate agreement and the World Health Organization, is seeking to return to the United Nations Human Rights Council, and promises to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. These are hugely positive and admirable steps. Yet Biden's early foreign policy pronouncements visa-vis China and U.S. leadership are problematic.

Biden's recent address to the Munich Security Conference is a good window into his administration's thinking in these early days. There are three causes for concern.

First, there is the rather naive idea that "America is back" as world leader. The United States is only now returning to multilateralism, has utterly botched the Covid-19 pandemic, and until January 20 was actively working against the mitigation of climate change. It still must heal the many deep wounds left by Trump, not least the insurrection of January 6, and address why seventy-five million Americans voted for him last November. That means reckoning with the hefty dose of white supremacist culture animating much of today's Republican Party.

Second, "The partnership between Europe and the United States," Biden declared, "is and must remain the cornerstone of all that we hope to accomplish in the twenty-first century, just as we did in the twentieth century." Really? I am a Europhile and...