US Prez Biden to host Quad summit on Sept 21, Modi to attend

President Joe Biden will host the 2024 Quad Leaders Summit in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 21, the first time he is hosting foreign leaders at his personal home, the White House announced on Thursday. PM Narendra Modi, Australian PM Anthony Albanese and Japanese PM Kishida Fumio will attend the summit.

“This will be President Biden’s first time hosting foreign leaders in Wilmington as president—a reflection of his deep personal relationships with each of the Quad Leaders, and the importance of the Quad to all of our countries,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

India and US have swapped the opportunity to host the summit, with Delhi passing on the 2024 summit to Washington DC to host for logistical convenience. All other leaders will be in the US for the UN’s Summit of the Future and the political calendar in the US makes it difficult for Biden to travel. India, the White House confirmed, will host next year’s summit. This will allow Delhi to welcome both the next American president, be it Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, in the new leader’s first year in office.

Jean-Pierre added that the Biden-Kamala Harris administration had made “elevating and institutionalizing the Quad a top priority, from the first-ever Quad Leaders Summit at the White House in 2021, to annual Summits since then”.

The White House also said that Quad foreign ministers had met eight times, and the four governments continue to meet and coordinate at all levels. “The Quad Leaders Summit will focus on bolstering the strategic convergence among our countries, advancing our shared vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific region, and delivering concrete benefits for partners in the Indo-Pacific in key areas. These include health security, natural disaster response, maritime security, high-quality infrastructure, critical and emerging technology, climate and clean energy, and cybersecurity,” Jean-Pierre said.

HT reported last week, based on a briefing by State Department officials, how the Biden administration sees Quad as among the President’s most important foreign policy legacies. The officials said that among other achievements of Quad, the Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness initiative (an effort to track in real time what’s happening in the territorial waters across the region), cooperation in the cyber/digital realm (including training of officials and education fellowships), and humanitarian assistance and disaster cooperation stand out.

While the strategic subtext of Quad is obvious to all participating countries — they share an interest in countering China’s belligerence — and Beijing’s behaviour constitutes a key part of the conversation among leaders, officially, Quad focuses more on offering a positive vision for the region. The officials said that the idea was to give all countries in the Indo-Pacific choices and options, and offer concrete deliverables and public goods.