Biden nods to Camp David history by inviting Yoon, Kishida
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[August 17, 2023]
By Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Joe Biden will push Camp David into the
international spotlight on Friday when he hosts the leaders of Japan and
South Korea there, a return to glory for a mountain retreat that has
become indelible in diplomatic history.
Biden chose the rustic redoubt in the Maryland hills for the first
U.S.-Japan-South Korea summit because Camp David has often been used to
symbolize newfound or hard-won friendship, a senior administration
official said.
"Certainly in the case of this summit, we envision Camp David kind of
marking a new beginning for all of us as trilateral partners among the
U.S., ROK (South Korea) and Japan. So we think the symbolism is heavy
here and really can't be overstated," the official said.
Biden, Japan's Fumio Kishida and South Korea's Yoon Suk Yeol are
expected to meet in the historic Laurel Lodge. Their working lunch is
expected to take place in the President’s Cabin, Aspen Lodge, and if the
weather is good an afternoon press conference will take place outdoors
in the woodsy setting.
Built by the Works Progress Administration, the infrastructure program
created by President Franklin Roosevelt during the Great Depression, the
camp has hosted its share of international detentes. Most famously,
President Jimmy Carter brokered the Camp David accords in 1978 between
Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem
Begin.
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The first foreign leader to visit Camp David, then known as
"Shangri-La," was British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who was there
for World War Two talks with Roosevelt. U.S. archive photos show them
near a stream, Roosevelt holding a fly rod and Churchill a cigar.
Since then, a parade of foreign leaders have been invited to the
180-acre compound in the Catoctin Mountains of western Maryland. Soviet
Premier Nikita Krushchev visited President Dwight Eisenhower there in
1959, a few years before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis brought Cold War
tensions to a boil.
In 2000, President Bill Clinton used Camp David to try to corral Israeli
Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian President Yasser Arafat into a
peace deal, but ended in failure.
When Arafat, who was blamed for the impasse, later called Clinton a
“great man,” Clinton wrote in his memoir of his terse reply.
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![](../images/081723PIX/news_o22.jpg)
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks on the
phone with Russia's President Vladimir Putin about a possible
Russian invasion of Ukraine, as Biden spends the weekend at the U.S.
presidential retreat at Camp David, in this official White House
handout photo released after the call took place in Thurmont,
Maryland, U.S., February 12, 2022. The White House/Handout via
Reuters/File Photo
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“I am not a great man. I am a failure, and you have made me one,” he
told Arafat.
WHERE PRESIDENTS REST
Camp David is also a place where presidents rest up from the rigors
of the office and escape the confines of the White House, the
antique-filled executive mansion that Harry Truman used to call "the
Great White Prison."
President Ronald Reagan visited Camp David 189 times over eight
years. President Donald Trump, by contrast, preferred his own golf
resorts and only went to Camp David 15 times over his four years in
office. He had to abandon plans for a G7 summit there in 2020
because of the coronavirus pandemic. Eisenhower, who named Camp
David for his father and grandson, would grill steaks for family and
friends. President George W. Bush would go mountain bike riding.
Carter liked to fish in the mountain streams.
One time George W. Bush hosted Russian leader Vladimir Putin at Camp
David and introduced Putin to his Scottish terrier, Barney. On a
subsequent visit to Russia, Putin showed Bush his big black Labrador
and said it was "bigger, stronger, faster than Barney," Bush said.
The seemingly mundane at Camp David can sometimes erupt into major
headlines, like the time President George H.W. Bush was out for a
jog and experienced an abnormal heartbeat, prompting the White House
to go into crisis mode.
"Marlin, see if you can get me a two-week vacation out of this, will
you?" a recovering Bush told his press secretary Marlin Fitzwater
later.
(Reporting By Steve Holland; Editing by Heather Timmons and Grant
McCool)
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