Asean Caves In to the Bad Guys

Gone are the days when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations was steered by Indonesia's Suharto, Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew, and Malaysia's Mahathir Mohamad. Call them dictators or whatever you like, but to be sure, these leaders did lead Asean and made it a real entity in world affairs.

A case in point was the third Asean Summit in 1987 in Manila. A …