On the eve of the American Thanksgiving Day celebration, we should all pause and pray the leaders of world’s superpowers can take a deep breath and remain calm.

Just more than a week after Islamic terrorists made coordinated, surprise attacks across Paris, the world is on a heightened sense of alert.

That sense was ratcheted up a notch last Friday when another terror group took over a hotel in Africa, killing more than a dozen.

On Tuesday, the tension level escalated exponentially after Turkish military jets shot down a Russian jet that Turkey says violated the country’s airspace.

Sadly during times such as this is when small issues become magnified in huge, potentially disastrous ways.

What might otherwise be a minor disagreement can result in the start of a war when tensions are high and nerves on edge.

More worrisome is that such issues may cause the world’s powers to take the focus off the real enemy — the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The U.S. made a huge error in judgment by its premature withdrawal from Iraq in 2011. That move, experts say, allowed ISIS to grow in power.

We cannot make another such move here by allowing a single error in judgment — either by the Russian pilots violating the Turkish airspace or by the Turkish pilots who shot the Russian down.

The threat by Islamic fundamentalist terror groups is bigger than any single country. The terrorists are a global problem that will require concerted, and ruthless resolve to vanquish.