Time for triple-loop thinking: Are we asking the right geo-strategic, economic and social questions?

An image on the 3 April cover of The Economist shows an angry US President Donald Trump shouting on one side, with China’s President Xi Jinping calmly smiling on the other. “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake,” says the headline.A revealing picture in the White House’s archives shows US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai shaking hands in Beijing on 9 July 1971, when Kissinger made his secret dash for a détente with China. The press was told that Kissinger was unwell and resting in Pakistan.

President Yahya Khan of Pakistan had arranged the meeting, which was followed by another between Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong on 21 February 1972 to formalize the détente that Trump has ended. The Zhou-Kissinger picture captures the two countries’ approaches to diplomacy: an eager Kissinger reaching out for Zhou’s hand and a gracious Zhou reciprocating. Kissinger contrasted the two approaches.

The Chinese approach, he said, was historically grounded, philosophically oriented and based on thinking in terms of a process over decades. He contrasted that with US diplomacy, which tends to seek quick agreements and focus on immediate outcomes (Trump’s ‘art of the deal’). Since then, the difference has become a template: for Americans, urgency and immediacy matter; and for the Chinese, patience and civilizational time.

As Kissinger said: “The Americans have a list of things… the Chinese have an objective.” This is a historic example of ‘triple-loop thinking’ in diplomacy: not just what each side wants, but how each side understands time itself. From this springs ‘triple-loop learning,’ which refers to how individuals or organizations learn at progressively deeper levels. It extends