Biden to host Quad leaders at Wilmington home, highlighting close personal relationships & life's journey

For the final meeting of the Quad in his term, a grouping he was central in reviving, US President Joe Biden has chosen his personal home as the venue.

Biden is hosting the Quad Leaders Summit over the weekend in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware. He will host Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Australian PM Anthony Albanese, and Japanese PM Fumio Kishida for bilateral meetings before a formal dinner and four-way summit on Saturday.

Biden grew up in Wilmington and has a home there. Even though he has been a primary resident of Washington DC for decades, he has continued to live periodically in his Wilmington home and has spent lots of weekends there through the presidency. He has invoked his upbringing in speeches throughout his public life, including his high school where he will host the formal Quad Leaders Summit.

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After withdrawing from the 2024 presidential election and passing on the baton to Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden decided to host the Quad leaders at his Wilmington home instead of the White House.

Bilateral meetings at home, summit at high school

Biden will host bilateral meetings with visit Quad leaders at his home in Wilmington and the formal dinner and summit at his high school.

Biden will meet Albanese on Friday and Modi and Kishida on Saturday at his home, according to AFP.

After bilateral meetings, Biden will host the leaders for the four-way Quad Leaders Summit and an “intimate” dinner at his high school Archmere Academy.

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The leaders will also be part of the ‘Cancer Moonshot’ even at the high school, which is an initiative announced launched by Biden to find vaccine-based immunotherapies for cancer. Notably, cancer is personal to the Biden family as Beau Biden, Joe Biden’s son, died from brain cancer in 2015.

Focus on personal relationships in farewell meet

Wilmington has always been close to Biden and hosting Quad leaders there at his home and school from where he started the long journey to the White House decades ago showcases the personal touch that he is giving to the Quad Summit.

This will be the first time that Biden will host any foreign leader in Wilmington, which reflects “his deep personal relationships with each of the Quad Leaders”, said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Biden started out as the one of the youngest senators in US history and, after more than four decades of public life including eight as vice president, became the oldest President of the United States in 2020. Now, in the final months of his presidency, Biden is leaning on the Quad Summit to showcase his life’s journey.

Biden specifically wanted to incorporate “personal touches” at Quad Summit and emphasise the importance of “deep personal relationships” as central to his foreign policy approach, a senior White House official told NBC News.

The network further reported that during bilateral meetings and group discussions over the weekend, Biden is likely to proudly showcase his Wilmington home, which is known by aides as ‘Lake House’ because of the artificial lake on the estate. He is expected to share with them milestone moments of his more than 50 years of public life in Wilmington.

Biden decided to host the four-way summit and the intimate dinner at his school, Archmere Academy, as it is a place of particular significance to him, said the official quoted above.

In his many years of public life, Biden has recalled weeding Archmere’s gardens, cleaning its windows, and painting its iron fence as a student, according to NBC.

In his 2008 memoir ‘Promises to Keep’, Biden noted that one of his proudest achievements at the school was to start giving public speeches which helped him overcome childhood stutter. Even though Biden has largely overcome the stutter, it has popped over the years in his conversations and speeches and he has been very open about it. At a town hall during the 2020 campaign, he addressed it in a town hall event as well.

Biden’s push for Quad

The fact that Biden chose to host Quad Leaders’ Summit at his home in Wilmington also reflects the importance accorded to the grouping.

The Quad comprises the United States, India, Japan, and Australia. Even though the grouping first emerged in 2007, it was effectively in suspension for a long time until Modi and the then-Japanese PM Fumio Kishida pushed for the revival. The group started reviving in 2017 and then Biden made it central to the Indo-Pacific approach after becoming the president in 2021.

Biden held a virtual summit within 100 days of his term and the leaders have since convened five times. The summit over the weekend will be the sixth leader-level Quad event.

Quad is focussed on the Indo-Pacific region where it promotes a rules-based order, inclusive development, and freedom of the seas. Even though the nations never mention China by the name, the Quad is practically focussed at addressing Chinese expansionism and hegemonic designs in the region.

The Quad Summit comes at a time when China has ramped up its aggression in the region, threatening the Philippines in the disputed South China Sea. Ahead of the summit, White House National Security Spokesperson John Kirby said China “will certainly be high on the agenda” and the leaders had a “common understanding about the challenges that the PRC [People’s Republic of China] is posing”.