WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is hosting the leaders of Australia, India and Japan at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, this weekend, seeking to use his fourth and final “Quad summit” to cement the alliance between the United States and Indo-Pacific nations and to counter China’s rising influence in the region.
Biden will use the summit to expand his “cancer moonshot” program and the Quad Fellowship, a scholarship program designed to build ties among the next generation of scientists and technologists. The four leaders will sign a maritime agreement and announce a joint Coast Guard mission.
There will be no specific policies aimed at China, according to Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser. But when Biden meets with Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India, Sullivan said, they will discuss how they see China’s actions in the region, and will try to coordinate approaches “to the extent that makes sense for both countries.”
Biden has often said that “all politics is personal,” and the decision to open his home reflected his conviction that deep relationships are the best way to forge constructive alliances. With just a few months left in the president’s term, this year’s summit will have a personal touch. On Friday night, when the president had a one-on-one meeting with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of Australia, he gave Albanese a tour of his home.
Biden was scheduled to have one-on-one meetings with the other two leaders — Modi and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan — Saturday. All four were to meet for a more formal session in the afternoon and have an “intimate” dinner in the evening, a White House spokesperson said.
Although the Quad alliance has been in existence for more than a decade, Biden was the first president to convene a meeting among the leaders of the nations as a foursome. It reflects his belief that, in addition to bilateral meetings and large gatherings, there is value in what Sullivan called a “latticework approach with multiple institutions, overlapping partnerships, different configurations.”
Later on Saturday, the leaders were set to unveil a new collaboration — the Quad Cancer Moonshot Initiative — aimed at reducing cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific region.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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