At the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in Manila, Brunei's Prince Mateen carried a message that has echoed through every era of regional diplomacy: that smaller nations must author their own fate or risk becoming footnotes in someone else's story. Speaking at the Philippine International Convention Center from July 20 to 23, he wove together two urgent threads — the defense of a rules-based regional order and the existential necessity of collective climate action — into a single argument about what it means for Southeast Asia to survive and govern itself with dignity.