There's no place like home for Joe Biden -- which is why the US president is bringing the leaders of Australia, Japan and India to his beloved Delaware hometown for a farewell summit on Saturday. The meeting in Wilmington in the twilight of Biden's one-term presidency reflects the importance that the 81-year-old has placed on the so-called "Quad" group as a counterweight to a rising China. Biden will host Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for private, one-on-one meetings at his house in the city some 110 miles (176 kilometers) from Washington, having met Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese there on Friday night.
All the leaders will then travel to Biden's former high school in Wilmington for a four-way meeting, followed by an event for his "Cancer Moonshot" initiative and then an intimate dinner. As Biden tries to establish his legacy after dropping out of November's presidential election and handing the campaign reins to Kamala Harris, officials say there will be "deliverables" from the summit. They include the first joint coast guard exercises between the four nations -- a key step in a region where maritime tensions with China over its claims to the South China Sea are ever present.
A senior Biden administration official insisted that "we would not in any way consider this to be a red flag of any kind" to China, saying it was designed to "uphold and enforce international law." The White House said however that China would .