On 8 August 1967, five men representing five Southeast Asian countries signed in the Thai capital of Bangkok a declaration establishing a new regional association — the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The five men were Adam Malik, Presidium Minister for Political Affairs and Minister for Foreign Affairs of Indonesia; Tun Abdul Razak, Deputy Prime Minister, Minister for Defence and Minister for National Development of Malaysia; Narciso Ramos, Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Philippines; S. Rajaratnam, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Singapore; and Thanat Khoman, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Thailand.

The document that they signed, entitled the ASEAN Declaration and thereafter also known as the Bangkok Declaration, had five preambular and five operative paragraphs. It pledged their governments to seven “aims and purposes”:

1. • Economic growth, social progress and cultural development;

2. • Regional peace and stability;

3. • Economic, social, cultural, technical, scientific and administrative collaboration;

4. • Mutual assistance in training and research;

5. • Collaboration in agriculture and industry, trade, transportation and communications, and the improvement of living standards;

6. • Promotion of Southeast Asian studies; and

7. • Cooperation with regional and international organizations.

Underlying these objectives was the common determination of the five countries to live in peace with one another, to settle their disputes peacefully rather than by force, and to cooperate with one another for common purposes. Proclaiming itself in the Bangkok Declaration to be “open for participation to all States in the South-East Asian Region subscribing to (its) aims, principles and purposes”, the new association was the first to seek to bring all of Southeast Asia — the area between the South Asian sub-continent in the west and the Pacific Ocean in the east and between China, Japan and Korea in the north and Australia in the south — into one inter-governmental organization.

To be sure, there were existing regional inter-state organizations in Southeast Asia.