What if Hawaii had become a Belgian colony?

How might history have changed if Hawaii had become a Belgian colony in the nineteenth century?

American expansion might have triggered a much wider war with European treaty powers, or Hawaii might later have become a strategically protected Allied base in 1940.

In this counterfactual, an expansionist United States might view Hawaii as a route into the Pacific, but moving against a Belgian colony could activate the European powers that guaranteed Belgium. American squadrons scattered around the world would be vulnerable if they lost access to British colliers, even while Civil War veterans and mobilization experience strengthened the U.S. position on land. A short war might humiliate the United States and reshape its later diplomacy, while a long one could spread into Canada, Mexico, Alaska, and the Pacific coast. If Washington left Hawaii alone, the islands might instead have become a Free Belgian or Anglo-American base in 1940, following the strategic logic used in Iceland and Greenland.