In Rio de Janeiro’s Itamaraty Palace, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva raised a quiet toast. There was no anti-American rhetoric, no thunderous declarations — just a call for “cooperation without coercion.” As BRICS leaders gathered for their July 6–7, 2025, summit, the message was unmistakable: this was not about replacing the United States, but about creating space from it.

In President Trump's second term, global diplomacy is not erupting into confrontation. It’s slipping into something quieter, more deliberate and perhaps more enduring — strategic non-alignment.

This isn’t the return of Cold War rivalry. It’s the rise of what policymakers are calling multi-alignment — or more pointedly, active non-alignment. From Brasília to Jakarta, Ankara to Nairobi, governments are no longer organizing their foreign policy around loyalty. They’re organizing it around leverage.

Rather than form bloc-based alternatives or pledge allegiance to rival powers, these states are playing the field — engaging Washington where useful, Beijing where strategic, and building new horizontal alliances among themselves. It’s not anti-Americanism. It’s strategic flexibility.

The recent BRICS summit in Rio de Janeiro offered a quiet, elegant demonstration. While some expected fireworks or a bold anti-Western manifesto, the bloc instead issued the “Rio de Janeiro Declaration,” a 31-page document calling for reform of UN and Bretton Woods institutions, ethical AI governance, and increased climate finance, while condemning attacks on Iran and supporting a Gaza ceasefire. The declaration noticeably steered clear of anti-U.S. rhetoric.

Lula, who hosted the summit, clarified the bloc’s ethos: BRICS, he argued, is not a tool of confrontation but a platform for reform, drawing inspiration from the 1955 Bandung Conference. Lula emphasized “equidistance” between major powers and reaffirmed Brazil’s non-aligned posture.

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