To analyze how states exert their influence, scholars often compartmentalize actions into rigid analytical frameworks, which obscures the holistic scope of the challenge.
Current paradigms of understanding the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) actions against the West typically use the DIME framework or even the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP)’s own “Three Warfares.” However, these frameworks that bin actions into discrete categories fail to encapsulate the totality of the PRCs activities targeting the west. While the United States hesitates to admit its “competition” with the PRC is conflict, the PRC appears to leverage all forms of warfare short of kinetic operations in daily affairs. To analyze how states exert their influence, scholars often compartmentalize actions into rigid analytical frameworks, which obscures the holistic scope of the challenge. By decomposing actions and analyzing them through the common frameworks, analysts fail to appreciate the interconnectedness across all elements of national power, particularly clandestine and sub-state illicit activities. These disadvantages call for a new model of analysis.