Understand the sentence "Brazil has avoided the gaze of the U.S., exerting its influence... instead" in an article from the Washington Post

Question

Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States, exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead.

---Making Brazil great again: How Jair Bolsonaro mirrors and courts Trump in the Washington Post.

My understanding:

"gaze" here means attention, and the subject of "exerting its influence..." is Brazil, so the sentence means "Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States, and Brazil is exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead".

It's a little awkward since it's "the U.S." followed by "exerting its influence...", and I don't know which two things are contradicting here, indicated by the word "instead".

So what's the correct meaning of this sentence?

Answer 1

"gaze" here means attention, and the subject of "exerting its influence..." is Brazil, so the sentence means "Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States, and Brazil is exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead".

Your interpretation here is spot on.

It's a little awkward since it's "the U.S." followed by "exerting its influence...", and I don't know which two things are contradicting here, indicated by the word "instead".

As others have mentioned, the subject in the prior clause is "Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States", so what is being contradicted is the means of exerting influence that is implied by the prior clause. Here we need to rely on context (in particular the following and preceding sentences or paragraphs) to determine what means of exerting influence is being implied.

This sentence is preceded by

“Trump is an example to me,” Bolsonaro said on a campaign trip to the United States last year. “I know there is a distance between me and Trump, but I hope to become closer to him, for the good of Brazil and of the United States. I want to bring lessons from here to Brazil.”

Brazil’s relationship with the United States has historically ranged from cautious friendship to reluctant acceptance.

and followed with

He makes the case that Brazil could be the United States’ main partner in the region to contain leftist ideologies and Chinese influence in South ­America.

The key point here is that the United States and Brazil have historically had a distant and somewhat tenuous relationship where Brazil engaged the U.S. "through regional alliances and multilateral institutions" rather than having a close diplomatic relationship where the two nations collaborated at a very high level. Bolsonaro, according to the article, wants to change this. Instead of having relations at an arm's length from one another, he wants to be close partners.

In summary, the difficulty in considering that sentence in isolation comes from the fact that what is being contradicted with "instead" is implicit rather than explicit, which means that we need to rely on context clues from the larger piece of writing (particularly what immediately precedes and follows the sentence we're interested in) to understand what meaning is intended.

Answer 2

Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States, exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead.

In your example, Brazil is the subject and "the gaze of the United States" is the object. Just like in the sentence "John likes Jane", John is the subject and Jane is the object of his affections. It should be pretty clear that "it" refers back to Brazil, but especially when you comprehend the rest of the sentence.

Brazil exerts "its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead" - instead of what? Instead of through the United States.

It could have read:

Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States and exerts (or "has exerted") its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead.

Answer 3

In sentences structured like this: Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States, exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead.

The use of that phrase exerting etc. is used to avoid a compound sentence:

Brazil has largely avoided the gaze of the United States and is exerting its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions instead.

Also, this structure is much used in English.

• John plays tennis daily, getting most of his exercise in this manner.

Instead of:

• John plays tennis daily and gets most of his exercise in this manner.

The US and Brazil have traditionally had a close relationship and here, Brazil is eschewing it. The image here is of anyone doing what he or she wants to do even though they are being seen doing it.

Historically, prior to recent times, Brazil and the US have had a closer relationship rather than a more distant relationship.

Answer 4

Perhaps

Brazil has exerted its influence through regional alliances and multilateral institutions and has hence largely avoided the gaze of the United States.

would be clearer. Whether that is plausible or not is quite another matter but that seems the writer's intention.

Answer 5

If the premise that regional alliances and multilateral institutions are how a nation can exert power without finding itself on the radar of other nations, particularly the United States, then I'd have no problem with this sentence. However, I think this sentence is confusing because it makes that assumption, which is neither clear nor obvious. The sentence itself is not poorly written, from a grammatical sense, it would be more accurate to describe it as a well-written sentence that describes a poorly-thought-out idea.