THE Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is now 50 years old, and at least 20 world leaders are in town to help us celebrate its achievement. Asean as such is twice older than the 23-year-old European Union, which was established by the Maastricht Treaty in 1993, although its precursor, the European Economic Community, was created by the Treaty of Rome in 1957. Asean was first established by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand in Bangkok on August 8, 1967, but it was only on December 15, 2008 that the Asean charter was formally launched in Jakarta as an economic organization, with the EU as its model.