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While attempting to appease a long list of utterly unappeasable foes—Iran, North Korea, Hamas, Hezbollah, and even Hugo Chávez—today the U.S. treats China, perhaps our most crucial economic partner, as an adversary because it defies us on global warming, dollar devaluation, and Internet policy.

It started last June in Beijing when U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner lectured Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, who recoiled like a man cornered by a crank at a cocktail party. Mr. Geithner was haranguing the Chinese on two highly questionable themes, neither arguably in the interests of either country: the need to suppress energy output in the name of global warming—a subject on which Mr. Geithner has no expertise—and the need for a Chinese dollar...