America is pivoting to Asia, focused on the Mideast, yet the "backyard," as Secretary of State John Kerry once referred to Latin America, is sprouting angry weeds as the scandal involving intelligence leaker Edward Snowden lays bare already thorny U.S. relations with Latin America.

The US National Football League (NFL) has become the latest terrain in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with Palestinian-American player Oday Aboushi as the target. Several sports articles have questioned Aboushi's views on Palestine and his ties to Palestinian organisations. Most recently, Jonathan Mael, the new media co-ordinator for Major League Baseball, compared Aboushi to an ex-NFL player charged with murder. He later apologised for the tweet.

In Miami, the couple's short visit to Cuba triggered outrage. Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said the trip was nothing more than a "wedding anniversary vacation not even disguised as a cultural program," while Sen. Marco Rubio accused the Carters of "funding the regime's systematic trampling of people's human rights."

The damages of war go far beyond what we once believed; society has now reached an understanding about the kind of moral, communal and psychological toll war can have on the soldiers, their family, community and even country. Perhaps the question we need to ask if there is a need to bolster our quest for non-violence as a means to resolve disputes and differences?

South American leaders planned to send a tough message to Washington on Friday over allegations of U.S. spying in the region and to defend their right to offer asylum to fugitive former U.S spy agency contractor Edward Snowden. Capping two weeks of strained North-South relations over the Snowden saga, presidents from the Mercosur bloc of nations were meeting in Montevideo, Uruguay. Complaints against the United States were high on the agenda.

The problem with all these complaints and proposals is that the United States has little leverage for influencing the internal politics of another country, especially one as large and distant as Egypt. This has nothing to do with President Obama. It is a central fact of international politics today, and it applies not just to the United States but to any single nation, however powerful it may be by traditional measures.

Sure, we've heard fiery speeches offering asylum from leftist leaders who are eager to criticize the United States. But supporting Snowden's cause and wanting to make Uncle Sam look bad aren't the only parts of the equation, with so many trade and diplomatic relations hanging in the balance, said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington.

It's a good debate to have, and in some ways, it seems like there's no reason why the U.S. shouldn't borrow from Finland or any other Nordic country -- we're richer and just as committed to improving education and health, after all. Here's the difference: Finland's welfare system was hardwired into its economic development strategy, and it hasn't been seriously challenged by any major political group since.