in recent years, brazil, with its increasingly prominent role as the strongest and most influential leading nation of latin america, has generally sought to cooperate with washington on specific issues of mutual interest rather than developing an all-encompassing, privileged relationship with the united states. while brazil has deepened its strategic ties with sworn u.s. rivals such as iran, cuba, venezuela and russia, and expressed recognition of palestine as a non-member state (which the u.s. opposed), it has remained relatively centrist, adopting a neutral and non-interventionist stance in most international issues, such as abstaining on united nations security council resolution 1973 allowing for military intervention in war-torn libya.