Cold War II is upon us. President Putin made it official Monday with a speech and an invasion of Ukraine. This global fight, just as during CWI, is over spheres of influence and the idea of liberty versus autocracy.

Russia wants to control what it calls its “near abroad.” It dominates former colonies such as Belarus and Kazakhstan and has already bitten off parts of Georgia and Ukraine. It is now beginning to completely swallow up the latter. 

Red China, meanwhile, has been treating neighboring seas like its private lake while it threatens Free China, a gateway to the Pacific Ocean. Russia also controls Syria, Mali, and other faraway lands, while China is active across South Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Both strive to dominate the North and South poles. 

Is CWII, then, just like its 20th century predecessor?

During CWI, “the truces never became hot because there was a certain level of predictability,” the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, told me recently. “What we have now is much more chaotic, much less predictable. We have no instruments to deal with crises,” which makes for “a dangerous situation.” 

So who’ll write such “instruments”? Where is George Kennan’s “Long Telegram”? Who currently can match President Reagan with the strategy he summed up as “We win, they lose”? Reagan eventually delivered on that campaign promise. In the spring of 1987 a senator who was about to launch a presidential run proposed to counter it with what he claimed was a more nuanced, diplomacy-based approach to world affairs. 

“Military interventionism as embodied in the Reagan Doctrine is in tatters,” that senator told a Harvard crowd of policy mavens. “It has led to deceiving our allies, trading arms to terrorists, circumventing Congress, and, most profoundly, losing the confidence of the American people and our European allies.”

After another unsuccessful presidential campaign in 2008, that senator, Joseph Biden, now finally serves in the top job at the White House. And in the aftermath of the Afghanistan debacle, some allies are feeling, well, deceived. 

In Vienna, a Russian diplomat is negotiating — on our behalf, no less — a return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which was secured by President Obama by circumventing Congress and going to the United Nations Security Council. As then, the current talks will likely result in the transfer of billions of dollars in cash to the world’s top sponsor of terrorism. 

Fewer than 40 percent of Americans now trust in the president’s foreign policy, and many Europeans and other allies are hedging bets over Mr. Biden’s boast that “America is back.” America’s losses, though, precede Mr. Biden’s presidency.  

At the height of CWI, Vice President Nixon beat Nikita Khrushchev in a 1959 “kitchen debate” by demonstrating the superiority of everyday products made in a capitalist society versus those manufactured by proud Soviet proletarians. 

Now we urge allies to avoid Huawei, the Beijing tech giant that quickly and efficiently installs snoop-plagued 5G networks across the globe. Washington, meanwhile, is bogged down in bureaucratic infighting that delays AT&T’s and Verizon’s plans to install 5G in America. 

All through the Obama, Trump, and Biden eras, we swore off military power. There were exceptions, but only that. As Washington finger wagged, hashtagged, and threatened, Presidents Putin and Xi deployed tanks, planes, ships, and cyber weapons. 

Early in the current European crisis, Mr. Biden vowed to send no American troops to Ukraine. As a former national security adviser, John Bolton, told reporters recently, no one wants American blood spilled there, but why announce it publicly before a war even starts?

The White House fetishizes “diplomacy” as if it were an end in itself, rather than one policy tool among many. Even as Mr. Biden announced a credible, painful sanctions package Monday, he left the door open for further diplomacy. If Russia escalates, he warned, we will make these sanctions even more painful.

In other words, Mr. Putin acts, we react.

The White House strangely believes that each time we use sanctions to deter Moscow, we lose future deterrence. As President Zelensky said recently, once Russian tanks roll in, “why would we need those sanctions then?”

Why, indeed?

Mr. Biden’s strategy highlights “unity” among our allies. That is important, but unity works best when America really leads, rather than leading from behind the alliance’s weakest links, such as Moscow-dependent Germany and Italy. 

Berlin’s decision Tuesday to halt certification of Nord Stream 2 — the pipeline that puts Europe’s energy consumption further under Russia’s thumb — can be reversed easily. Why did Mr. Biden waive congressional Nord Stream 2-related sanctions when they really mattered, before the pipeline was completed last summer?

While Moscow and Beijing make long-term plans, Washington is yet to start devising a coherent CWII strategy. 

The usual suspects will endlessly list America’s real and imagined 20th century sins and will caution against a return to a 1980s approach. Imagine, though, a future in which a post-CWII world is dominated by a Sino-Rus alliance, and in which Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, Tehran, the Taliban, and like-minded autocracies set the rules.

Aren’t we better off with America at the helm? How about, then, start with a return to “We win, they lose”?