Brazil has the fifth largest population and territory, and is on its way to also becoming the fifth largest GDP in the world. It then should – in an active, creative way – be a leading country in the reorganization of the world's power system. It was under this prism that a strongly diplomatic presidency led President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to spend more than an eighth of his two mandates (2003-2010) abroad. This search to improve Brazil's position within international relations' hierarchy is linked to the strategies that occur in the national sphere. A discussion on the complex relationship between dependency and development resurfaced as an effort to formulate a neo-developmentalist socio-economic policy. This paper highlights countries' capacity to react and organize around the 2008 global financial crisis, which was a significant time. From that time on, the world began to see Brazil differently, and to recognize the country's strategic resources, such as the new oil reserves, its environmental richness, and a unique potential to expand food production.