Shocking image defines conflict

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s description of The Australian’s front-page photo of an Australian boy holding the severed head of a decapitated Syrian soldier as shocking shows how powerfully the image has resonated around the world.

Everyone knows what an evil group the Islamic State really is.

But this photograph, of a father, an Australian citizen, encouraging his son to hold a human being’s severed head in exultant triumph, distils the essence of this group.

It is a single image that tells you everything you need to know about the Islamic State.

Kerry says it is one of the most revolting and sickening things he could imagine.

It defines a conflict, perhaps in the way that the photo of the evacuation of the US embassy in Saigon defined the Vietnam War.

It is right that Kerry, Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel and their Australian counterparts, Julie Bishop and David Johnston, focused on the security threat that returning violent jihadists will pose in societies such as the US and Australia. The urgent need for intelligence co-operation in this sphere will drive ever closer ­­US-Australia ties.

Yet in some ways the dominance of Iraq in the public presentation of the AUSMIN meeting demonstrates the old adage that the urgent is sometimes the enemy of the important.

The most important achievement at AUSMIN was the signing of the Force Posture Agreement, which provides a comprehensive framework and legal basis for US marines rotating through Darwin. It also lays the ground for a possible home porting, or at least rotational presence, of US navy vessels in western or northern Australia.

The key partnership between the US and Australia is in Asia, which dominated most of the AUSMIN discussion.

But, of course, the urgent need to co-operate in the crisis of the Middle East, and in counter-terrorism, naturally dominated the attention of the moment.