Does the conflict in Iraq amount to a civil war? In many ways, the public debate over this question is largely political. Calling Iraq a "civil war" implies yet another failure for the Bush administration and adds force to the question of whether U.S. troops still have a constructive role to play.

Politics aside, however, the definition of civil war is not arbitrary. For some -- and perhaps especially Americans -- the term brings to mind all-out historical conflicts along the lines of the U.S. or Spanish civil wars. According to this notion, there will not be civil war in Iraq until we see mass mobilization of sectarian communities behind more or less conventional armies.

But a more standard definition is common today:

1) Civil war refers to a violent conflict between organized groups within a country that are fighting over control of the government, one side's separatist goals, or some divisive government policy.

By this measure, the war in Iraq has been a civil war not simply since the escalation of internecine killings following the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, but at least since the United States handed over formal control to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004.

Here's why: Although the insurgents target the U.S. military, they are also fighting the Shiite-dominated Iraqi government and killing large numbers of Iraqis. There is little reason to believe that if the United States were suddenly to withdraw its forces, they would not continue their battle to control or shape the government.

Political scientists who study civil war have proposed various refinements to this rough definition to deal with borderline cases. One issue concerns how much killing has to occur -- and at what rate.

2) For a conflict to qualify as a civil war, most academics use the threshold of 1,000 dead, which leads to the inclusion of a good number of low-intensity rural insurgencies.

Current estimates suggest that more than 25,000 Iraqis have been killed in fighting since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003 -- a level and rate of killing that is comparable to numerous other conflicts that are commonly described as civil wars, such as those in Lebanon (1975-1990) and Sri Lanka (beginning in 1983).

The organization -- or rather, disorganization -- of the warring communities in Iraq means that a large-scale conventional conflict along the lines of the U.S. Civil War is unlikely to develop. More probable is a gradual escalation of the current "dirty war" between neighborhood militias that have loose ties to national political factions and are fighting almost as much within sectarian lines as across them.

This is roughly what happened in Lebanon and at a lower level in Turkish cities in the late 1970s. Ethnic cleansing will occur not as a systematic, centrally directed campaign (as in Bosnia), but as a result of people moving to escape danger.

And there's another twist to the terminology:

3) If the conflict in Iraq becomes purely a matter of violence between Sunni and Shiite communities driven by revenge and hatred rather than by political goals, many political scientists would say that it is something other than civil war.

Almost no one, for example, calls the Hindu-Muslim violence in India a civil war.

A civil war has to involve attempts to grab power at the center of government or in a given region, or to use violence to change some major government policy.

In Iraq's case, however, the vacuum of power at the center means that communal violence will inevitably be tied to struggles for political power and control.

A final complication concerns the nature of international involvement. Some argue, for example, that the war in Bosnia should be seen as an interstate war rather than a civil war, since the Bosnian Serb forces were armed and directed largely by Belgrade. Post-Mobutu violence in Congo is often termed a civil war, even though fighters have been closely tied to armies from neighboring states.

4) A conflict may be both a civil and an interstate war at the same time.

The Vietnam War, for instance, clearly comprised both a civil war in the South and an interstate war involving the North, the South and the United States.

Iraq may be moving in this direction. The United States and Britain are already openly involved, and such neighboring countries as Iran and Syria are more covertly involved. Not that it matters to the people dying there, but the next debate here may turn on whether what is already a civil war in Iraq should be viewed as an interstate war as well.

A recent report from Duke University that critiques the supposed gap between the number of American science and engineering (S&E) graduates and those of merging economies -- especially China's -- has led to false reassurance that the U.S. lead in science and technology is not under threat from China. It would be a grave mistake to drop our concerns about China's competitive challenge.

First, the Duke report simply claimed that China's true number of science and engineering bachelor degrees was 351,000, rather than the widely reported 600,000. Coupling this with an upward adjustment for American graduates still left China producing 214,000 more such degrees than the United States.

Moreover, undergraduates are only part of the concern. China's production of those with doctorates has increased rapidly. By 2003, China's homegrown science and engineering doctorates numbered almost half of the U.S. total.

Chinese were also earning large numbers of doctorates abroad. In 2001, the number of Chinese S&E doctorates earned in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States equaled 72 percent of the total of S&E doctorates earned by American citizens and permanent residents.

Since 1975, China has increased its global share of S&E doctorates from zero (courtesy of the Cultural Revolution) to 11 percent, not counting doctorates earned overseas. During the same three decades, the U.S. global share has fallen from half to roughly 22 percent.

More worrisome than the aggregate numbers is American universities' reliance on foreigners who earn doctorates. In engineering, foreigners account for over half of America's doctorates, and in computer science just under half.

If foreign-born holders of doctorates continued to stay in the United States, we wouldn't have to worry. Unfortunately, there are many signs that it is becoming much harder to retain them.

One need only look at the flow from Taiwan, one of the former main sources of American S&E doctoral degrees, to see what could happen. Up until 1994, Taiwanese earned more science and engineering doctorates in the United States than members of any other foreign nationality. By 2000, their numbers had plummeted because economic and educational opportunities at home were more appealing.

The Taiwanese didn't just stop coming to America. They also began to leave. As Taiwan's tech sector boomed in the 1990s, huge numbers of Taiwanese technologists (estimates range as high as 100,000) left America for home and took their technical skills with them.

Our two current biggest foreign sources of technologists, China and India, appear to be following Taiwan's path. China has begun to lure back large numbers of technologists. China's central and local governments offer free office space and other benefits to attract technologists home. These inducements are working. A 2005 survey of the Chinese American Semiconductor Professionals Association's members showed that the vast majority regard China as the most likely future work destination, and they rated Shanghai higher than even Silicon Valley on career potential. India's recruitment efforts have also started to bear fruit.

The challenge is not simply keeping up the numbers of technologists in America. China by many measures has improved its technological capabilities. On the Georgia Institute of Technology's Index of Technological Capability, China has more than doubled its index score over the past decade. China now ranks fourth behind the United States, Japan and Germany.

This rapid ascent is not surprising given China's increasing investments. China's research and development spending as a percentage of gross domestic product has tripled to 1.3 percent in the last decade, even while its GDP has ballooned. Few emerging economies spend even 1 percent of their GDP on research.

U.S. patents invented in China are also on the rise. Information-technology patents from corporations' Chinese technologists have risen from 134 in 1997-2001 to 482 during 2002-04. As a first step to meet this challenge, we should increase federal spending on basic and exploratory research. Our R&D spending has been flat at 2.6 percent of GDP for four decades, but the share of federal spending has declined from two-thirds to one-quarter.

Given that corporations now de-emphasize basic scientific research, the federal government should further support the basic research that could maintain our lead at the cutting edge of technology.

Increased federal funding would also address the issue of the falling share of investment in certain disciplines. With spending flat, the rising share commanded by biomedicine has meant a falling share spent on engineering and physics.

Federal support may also play a direct role in increasing interest in pursuing a science education. Since the 1950s, the number of undergraduate S&E majors in America has risen and fallen in line with federal research funding, as Professor Henry Rowen of Stanford University has pointed out.

Before meeting China's challenge, we first must recognize it. Complacency in reaction to "good'' news that China is producing fewer S&E graduates than commonly thought is not the answer.

Analysis of the Indian-U.S. nuclear agreement, as well as substituting natural gas for coal in fueling the Chinese electricity sector, reveals that side agreements between developed and developing countries could result in massive greenhouse gas emission reductions.

As part of its ongoing series of "Studies of the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center", Shorenstein APARC announces two major new titles on the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the genealogy, politics, and legacy of ethnic nationalism in Korea.

The first, The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History, edited by Joseph W. Esherick, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Andrew G. Walder, shows how the Cultural Revolution was experienced by ordinary Chinese at the base of urban and rural society. The second title, by Shorenstein APARC director Gi-Wook Shin, examines the blood-based notion of Korean identity that has come to override other forms of identity in the modern era.

Both books are available for purchase from the Stanford University Press website, through the links given below.