In 1873, a US military commission recommended that Ford Island, part of the Hawaiian kingdom come under US influence in exchange for the tax-free importation of sugar to the US.

The Americans were also interested in Pu'uloa, Pearl Harbour, as US control of Hawaii was considered vital for the defence of its west coast.

Two years later, the US Congress and the Hawaiian kingdom agreed to a seven-year Reciprocity Treaty in exchange for Ford Island and the lease of Pearl Harbour.

But to the US, the treaty and lease were just appetisers.

The Hawaiian monarchy and its Polynesian people were seen as an encumbrance to the development of a fully-fledged military outpost so had to be overthrown.

So, in violation of the Reciprocity Treaty, on 17 January 1893, the US backed a coup d'état against Queen Liliʻuokalani.

A ‘Committee of Safety’ composed of seven foreign residents and six Hawaiian subjects of American descent was formed and prevailed upon the US government to intervene.

So in came the Marines to ‘protect the national interest’ of the United States of America.

The insurgents established the Republic of Hawaii, but their ultimate goal was to invite the annexation of the islands by the United States, which occurred in 1898.

It was far from the last time the US was to use proxies and/or military might to subjugate governments in the prosecution of its own interests.

A common pattern was to, overtly or covertly, initiate action for regime change perhaps first meddling in internal matters then establishing a military presence to protect a government of its own choosing or promote its commercial interests.

From the late 1880s, as well as its action to incorporate Hawaii, it interfered in the Samoan civil wars, around the turn of the century succeeded in the Spanish–American was to annex Cuba and later in the Philippine–American war.

It installed governments in Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic and took over Costa Rica.

Closer to home, it interfered in the establishment of Indonesia after World War II and later, when president Sukarno seemed to be going too easy on Communism, it supported his overthrow. It also ensured that West Papua would be retained by Indonesia , denying it independence.

It orchestrated the 1953 Iranian coup d'état, unsuccessfully supported an invasion of Cuba, interfered in national elections in Italy, the Philippines, Japan, Lebanon and Russia, supported the coup d'état against a democratically elected government in Chile in 1973 and lost the Vietnam War.

It became enmeshed in the tragedy of Afghanistan and in the debacle of Iraq (in these and other cases forming ‘coalitions of the willing’ to take a bit of heat off itself).

According to one study, the US performed at least 81 overt and covert interventions in foreign elections between 1946 and 2000.

Much has been written about the proclivity of the US to involve itself in other countries’ affairs, from covert support to overt warfare.

Makes you wonder where PNG will end up if it happens to disagree with the US, or directs the US to move its military bases elsewhere.

In the 19th century the Hawaiian kingdom had an ultimately worthless Reciprocity Treaty with the US. In the 20th century the US engineered regime change against the democratically elected government of Chile.

Papua New Guinea is not for sale. We need to express this loudly to our political leaders.

We need to tell them to discontinue the PNG-USA Defence Cooperation Agreement.

We need to defend the sovereignty of PNG not dilute it.

And we need to understand that, even if we decide not to give the USA what it wants, it make take it anyway.

This we also must guard against as best we can.