Biden aims to put final stamp on Quad partnership with hometown summit

By Arlette Saenz and Samantha Waldenberg, CNN

(CNN) — President Joe Biden convened the leaders of Australia, India and Japan for a Quad summit in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, this weekend, aiming to put a final stamp on an alliance he hopes will endure beyond his presidency.

The current four-nation partnership is set to enter a new era as half of its leaders — Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida — will soon leave office. With an eye toward burnishing his foreign policy legacy, the president is turning to alliances like the Quad to make a final diplomatic push to counterbalance China’s rising influence as he prepares to hand off to a new administration.

China and its actions in the South China Sea was first on the agenda for the leaders when they turned to the private portion of their meeting on Saturday. At the start of the discussion, Biden was caught in a hot mic moment in which he can be heard saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping is looking to “buy himself some diplomatic space, in my view, to aggressively pursue China’s interest.”

“We believe Xi Jinping is looking to focus on domestic economic challenges and minimize the turbulence in China diplomatic relationships,” Biden can be heard saying.

“China continues to behave aggressively, testing this all across the region, and it’s true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South China, South Asia and the Taiwan Straits,” the president continued.

An administration official told CNN it was “not surprising that China would have been on the agenda.”

“I don’t think it’ll be much of a surprise that our inside voice matches our outside voice,” the official said.

While national security adviser Jake Sullivan insisted earlier Saturday during a briefing with reporters that “China is not the focus of the Quad,” the issue featured throughout the day.

In a joint statement after the summit, the leaders of the Quad countries said that they are “seriously concerned” about China’s escalations in the South China Sea, without naming the country by name.

“We continue to express our serious concern about the militarization of disputed features, and coercive and intimidating maneuvers in the South China Sea,” they wrote in the statement released by the White House. “We condemn the dangerous use of coast guard and maritime militia vessels, including increasing use of dangerous maneuvers.”

In their lengthy statement, the leaders also emphasized that they “condemn North Korea’s destabilizing ballistic missile launches and its continued pursuit of nuclear weapons in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions (UNSCRs).”

The summit, which marked the fourth in-person meeting of the group, ended with a series of deliverables, including the first joint Coast Guard exercise between the Quad countries, an expansion of an initiative aimed in part at monitoring illegal fishing and a $150 million commitment and collaboration to help reduce cervical cancer rates in the Indo-Pacific.

“Welcome to the border of Wilmington, Delaware. I’m really pleased that you were able to be in my home, and, and see where I grew up,” Biden said during opening remarks of the summit.

In his comments, Biden emphasized the importance of “democracy” while also saying that the Quad is “here to stay.”

“We’re democracies. Democracies, who know how to get things done,” Biden said. “While challenges will come, the world will change, because the Quad is here to stay, I believe. Here to stay.”

Next steps for a key pillar of Biden’s strategy

Even as officials express confidence in the staying power of the Quad grouping, the question of whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump will lead the next administration, and what approach they will take to alliances and China, loomed large over the weekend gathering as the four leaders mapped out next steps in their agenda.

“We are, of course, four leading democracies, and political change is baked into the cake,” a senior administration official previewing the summit said. “We believe that the Quad has buy-in across our systems and at all levels of government.”

The Quad, which Biden elevated to the leader level at the start of his term, has been a key pillar of his strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

According to senior administration officials, under the announced joint Coast Guard exercise between the four countries, a US Coast Guard vessel would first take the lead, hosting counterparts from the Australian, Japanese and Indian coast guards on their ship for a period of time. Each country plans to do the same on a rotational basis.

A senior administration official said China should not view the move as a “red flag,” arguing that the Coast Guard mission “is focused on reinforcing peace and stability and the continuity of international law in the region.”

The leaders also announced an expansion of the Indo-Pacific Partnership for Maritime Domain Awareness, which helps countries monitor illegal fishing and other unlawful activities in their waters, to the Indian Ocean and provide partners with more sophisticated technology and training.

And they launched a logistics network to allow the US military to share cargo space on aircraft and vessels to be used in humanitarian assistance or disaster relief operations. The partnership will also roll out new Open Radio Access Network pilot projects in the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia.

At the summit, Biden promoted the launch of a bipartisan Quad Caucus in the House and Senate to tout US commitment to the partnership, which Trump’s administration had also focused on at the foreign ministerial level.

But the most personal announcement for the president focused on new joint efforts to fight cancer. The Quad leaders launched a new partnership aimed at reducing cervical cancer in the Indo-Pacific, a global extension of the president’s signature “Cancer Moonshot” initiative.

This included efforts to provide more cervical cancer screenings in the region and increase vaccinations for human papillomavirus or HPV, a main cause for cervical cancer.

“I’m proud to announce that our four countries, the leaders behind me and many organizations here today are committing over $150 million for HPV screening and therapeutics,” Biden said.

The Cancer Moonshot is among the president’s most personal White House initiatives. The program, which works to end cancer, launched when Biden was vice president following the death of his son Beau from brain cancer. It received a boost in funding in 2022, aimed at ramping up cutting-edge cancer research.

The move comes as the president was looking to put a personal touch on his final gathering with Kishida, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Sit-downs with foreign leaders

Biden welcomed the leaders to Wilmington, located about 100 miles north of Washington, DC, and home to about 71,000 people. India was initially set to host the Quad summit this year but agreed to swap duties as Biden’s time in office dwindled down. The leaders are meeting ahead of the UN General Assembly in New York City next week.

Over the course of two days, Biden hosted each of the leaders for personal meetings at his private home where he often decamps on the weekends. The president met with Albanese on Friday and followed that with similar sit-downs with Kishida and Modi on Saturday.

Those one-on-one discussions were closed to press, a break from the approach to most of the president’s bilateral meetings in which reporters typically have an opportunity to witness at least a limited portion of the event.

The main Quad gathering took place at Archmere Academy, the private Catholic school Biden attended in Claymont, Delaware. This included a leaders-level meeting, the Cancer Moonshot event and a private dinner.

The president stopped by Archmere on Friday evening to greet members of the school’s football team, which Biden was a part of during his own high school years. When a student asked what it’s like being president, Biden said, “It’s a little bit like being class president. No, I’m joking.”

Several US presidents have used their own homes to foster personal relationships with world leaders. In 1983, President Ronald Reagan and first lady Nancy Reagan hosted Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip at their ranch in the Santa Ynez Mountains in California.

Plans for horse riding, a mutually loved hobby, were scrapped due to rain on the day of the visit, but the royals and the Reagans spent time together over a Mexican-style lunch featuring enchiladas and tacos.

President George W. Bush twice hosted Russian President Vladimir Putin at his family homes — once at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in 2001 and again in 2007 at Walker’s Point, the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport, Maine. At that meeting, the two leaders — along with former President George H.W. Bush — went fishing on the sidelines of talks about missile defense systems.

Trump invited several world leaders to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, while in office. A visit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which featured a day of golf, turned into a real-time diplomatic strategy session as the two leaders received word of an unexpected missile launch by North Korea in the middle of dinner at the private club.

The two — with the help of light from aides’ cell phones — pored over documents on a dimly lit patio together in plain sight of the club’s members and guests.

As Biden turned to his own hometown diplomacy this weekend, national security communications adviser John Kirby said he would be focused on “showing them a place and a community that shaped so much of the public servant and the leader that he became.”

He added, “It’s also a reflection of his belief that, like politics, foreign policy is also personal.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

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