How Should Mexico Look at the ASEAN?
By Adolfo Laborde
Professor, Law and International Relations Department, Tec de Monterrey, Santa Fe Campus. Visiting researcher at the Institute of Development, Funda University, China.
Abstract
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) was created in Bangkok, Thailand, on August 8, 1967. The founding states were Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. The domestic problems of the southeast Asian nations and the economic, political, and military tensions provoked by the Soviet Union, the United States, and China in the region during the so-called Cold War led to the creation of this organization for regional cooperation. There was also a need to make sure the region was stable, because of the process of decolonization after World War II and the problems that accompanied the independence of Singapore from the British Crown in 1959. This process was not completed until August 1965, after Singapore was expelled from the Federation of Malaysia. Furthermore, the region’s ethnic and cultural diversity and the geographic and political separation of national territories, as is the case in Indonesia and Malaysia, played a role. There was an ongoing communist movement, especially in Indochina (today Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam), most notably U.S. military intervention in Vietnam in August 1964.