By THOMAS BARNETT, Scripps Howard News Service

As our era features globalization's rapid and unprecedented advance, it will logically also feature the greatest single religious awakening the world has ever seen. Religion will become eminently more important because economic conditions will change more dramatically in coming years and decades than at any other time in human history.

As America struggles with financial austerity at home and heightened economic competition abroad, the temptation to find new enemies is substantial. It should be resisted at all costs because what we really need is to be realistic about the actual challenges we face instead of being nostalgic for "threats" we find more familiar.

The current debate over Iraq, including the surge and new counterinsurgency strategy, is really a proxy for a larger contentious struggle within the Pentagon over future war planning: the mix of weapons and major platforms we buy and the way we organize the troops.

My list of my top 10 foreign policy wishes for 2008 is presented in reverse order of urgency:

_10. Continued frustration for Hugo Chavez.