Honiara dips its toe in Great Power politics as war resumes in the Holy Land and Moscow launches its new offensive to seize eastern Ukraine.

(Originally published April 20 in “What in the World“) Easter is over, and with it whatever peace it promised.

Russia has launched its offensive to take the eastern region of Donbas after shelling cities across the country. Shelling resumed around Kyiv, the assault of which Russian forces had reportedly abandoned, and reached as far west as Lviv, the city near the Polish border that has become a logistical center for distribution of relief supplies and weapons to Ukraine and has offered relative sanctuary to refugees of the conflict in the east. As Russia’s forces pounded the strategic coastal city of Mariupol, which sits between Donbas and the Crimea, the U.S. and other Western allies pledged continued ammunition and military aid to Ukraine, with Canada joining the list of nations racing to send heavier artillery and munitions to Kyiv to give it the military muscle to oppose a conventional Russian armored assault.

There’d been a lot of hooplah in the past week over the fact that the three Abrahamic religions were celebrating their high Holidays simultaneously—Christian Easter, Jewish Passover and Muslim Ramadan—for the first time in 30 years. Instead of amity, however, combined worship only inspired overcrowding, jostling and then clashes at Jerusalem’s Al Aqsa mosque, or as Jews know it Temple Mount, prompting intervention by Israeli forces.

Militants reacted by firing rockets at Israel from Gaza, which were knocked down by Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system. While Iron Dome is designed for short-range, “dumb” missiles like those lobbed from Gaza, global demand for more sophisticated anti-missile systems, such as the Patriot missile and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, that can target longer-range guided missiles has been rising since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Israel retaliated by launching air strikes against Gaza.

China, meanwhile, has signed its security agreement with the Solomon Islands, despite a flurry of diplomatic efforts by Australia and the United States to convince Honiara to drop it. A draft of the agreement gave Beijing the ability to use the Solomons as a port-of-call for its naval vessels, extending the reach of its fleet and giving it the ability to hinder Australian maritime access to the Pacific, both commercial and naval. The U.S. has in recent years been building up forces in northern Australia to check a growing Chinese naval presence in the South China Sea, and Australia served as a key base for U.S. and Allied naval operations against Japan’s ability to defend positions in East Asia during World War II.

The agreement clearly gives the Solomons enormous leverage on both sides. It can now essentially ask either Beijing, Canberra or Washington for almost anything it wants. Well played, Honiara.