To date, the EU has tended toward relatively low-risk missions — and emphasized force protection. Some European strategists have bridled at this “safety first” approach.

In August, EU troops took to the streets of Kinshasa to growing unrest between rival political factions. At home, European leaders were pulling together units to reinforce the UN’s mission to Lebanon, risking the possibility of confrontation with Hizbullah.

But if the EU was making significant strides, it stumbled along the way. France, expected to provide the core of the Lebanon force, wavered over how many troops to send — diplomats fretted that they might be putting the soldiers in excessive danger.

Meanwhile, tensions were growing among European contributors to NATO’s much-expanded operation in Afghanistan. As the Taleban inflicted unexpectedly high casualties, it was muttered that some nations were far readier to take the offensive than others. This week, negotiations on reinforcing the NATO force stalled in Brussels.

This combination of advances and set-backs pointed to a looming paradox — polls consistently show that EU electorates want Europe to have a greater global role. But they are not sure that they want to make enemies and take major casualties along the way.

Some hope that the EU can maintain an unthreatening image. As the 2003 suicide bombing of the UN headquarters

The EU’s previous good fortune means that its strategic identity will suffer all the more when it does take serious losses.

in Baghdad demonstrated, well-intentioned international organizations with well-known brands can become targets in troubled regions.

And the UN’s reaction to that bombing — a temporary withdrawal of its Iraq operation to Jordan — showed that those organizations’ strategies are highly vulnerable to attacks.

So as the EU builds up its military and civilian capacities for conflict management, an uneasy question remains unanswered: How will the EU respond to high-profile casualties?

This is not just an operational question, but a deeply political one. The deployment of multinational personnel under an EU flag is an important and visible symbol of European solidarity. This applies especially to non-NATO countries, such as Austria and Finland. What if such a symbolic commitment were to result in very real loss of life?

The EU has been lucky to avoid many such casualties to date — sometimes very lucky indeed. In 1994, the EU sent a senior official, Hans Koschnik, to administer the divided and ruined city of Mostar in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

On his first night in town, Mr. Koschnik went to his hotel bar for a drink — and while he was out,

A British military ethicist argued that European military cooperation would flounder on a lack of deep-rooted loyalty between soldiers of different nations.

his room was destroyed by an anti-tank rocket.

Had Mr. Koschnik been killed, the nascent “European Security and Defense Identity” would have suffered a serious blow. And although a small number of lower-profile EU monitors did lose their lives in the Balkans, these fatalities never seized the headlines.

When the European Union launched its first military operation in Africa — in a highly robust intervention in the Democratic Republic of Congo — it was fortunate again, not even losing any troops to illness.

The EU has not just been lucky — it has also tended toward relatively low-risk missions and emphasized force protection. Some European strategists have bridled at this “safety first” approach.

In 2004, one group of strategic thinkers called for an EU Human Security Force that would only use “minimum and precise force” so as to limit civilian deaths. Their report coyly admitted that this approach meant greater risks for European troops.

But skeptics have argued that the EU’s previous good fortune means that its strategic

An uneasy question remains unanswered: How will the EU respond to high-profile casualties?

identity will suffer all the more when it does take serious losses.

In a 2001 article bitingly entitled “But will they fight and will they die?,” the British military ethicist Patrick Mileham argued that European military cooperation would flounder on a lack of deep-rooted loyalty between soldiers of different nations.

He also predicted that this issue would only receive serious political attention after “a blood bath, or a rout, or both."

Even without the experience of such an EU rout, there is strong evidence that EU citizens are sensitive to casualties. In 1994, ten Belgian UN peacekeepers were killed during the Rwandan genocide. Their officer would eventually be put on trial and their overall commander — Canadian general Romeo Dallaire — cruelly pilloried in the Belgian press.

With the EU setting up multinational battle groups for rapid interventions, it is not hard to see that a similar public controversy would put a huge strain on European solidarity.

What would happen, for example, if a French commander were blamed for

The biggest strain on the EU’s strategic identity may prove to be not military casualties — but the potential loss of civilian personnel.

future Belgian deaths in Africa — especially if any were due to “friendly fire”?

The fallout would worsen should the countries involved have widely differing approaches to the use of force: one battle group will contain soldiers from both France — where the rapid reaction forces enjoy 89% public support — and Germany, where they have just 60% backing.

And accusations might grow even more vehement if it was felt that those killed had been deployed to satisfy another European country’s interests — especially the long-range interests of former colonial powers. “We worked so hard to get into Europe,” a senior Czech official told me soon after the EU’s enlargement in May 2004, “and now you want us to go into Africa.”

Yet, the biggest strain on the EU’s strategic identity may prove to be not military casualties, but the potential loss of civilian personnel. There is currently considerable discussion of a European Civil Peace Corps, proposed by the European Parliament.

Allowing non-military experts to deploy rapidly in response to crises might seem less controversial than deploying combat troops — boosting the EU’s image as a “civilian power.” But sending civilians into uncertain situations might also risk high-profile casualties.

As has been shown in Iraq, the kidnapping and execution of international civilians is a powerful means for insurgents to grab worldwide media coverage.

The deployment of multinational personnel under an EU flag is an important and visible symbol of European solidarity.

And the differing attitudes of European governments to negotiating with hostage-takers is another potential source of dissension within the EU.

Therefore, even if the EU were to emphasize non-military assets abroad, it still runs the risk of a “blood bath, or rout, or both." This risk has been recognized by the EU bureaucracy, and the European Commission has funded projects to increase the security of aid workers in the field.

But projects cannot always keep up with events. With European personnel taking greater risks, and losing personnel in Africa and the Middle East, we may be approaching the grim moment in which European leaders and voters face the reality of heavy losses.