European militaries are tiny, underfunded, undermanned and useless. Even in the height of the cold war, this was the case. They had ammunition reserves enough for 15 days of combat, on average.
It's only gotten worse since then. It's basically just a welfare program for show, it doesn't even meet NATO's obligations. The USA covers all of Europe's military weakness so they can focus their money on the burdens of pensions and welfare cheques and going into vast debt.
I have no idea why European countries are in Afghanistan, they've neglected basically every requirement of the alliance. I suppose it's worth the tax-payer funds to send out some soldiers to Afghanistan so they can be accused of 'warcrimes' and 'imperialism' and whatnot so they can stay programmed and give some diplomatic weight with the USA.
Hilarious. France and the UK have similar military expenditures. Proportionally to their size, their population and their GDP they have bigger and more modern militaries than any other country in the world, except the US military, which is ridiculously bloated and a black hole of government waste. And I'd love to know how exactly the US "covers" Europe's military weakness. I'm sure you think the US government and military are some sort of generous martyrs sacrificing themselves selflessly for the safety of ungrateful weaklings, because you seem to be an idiot, but the US's continued ocuppation of Germany is anything but selfless.
Anyways the french in particular have and continue to meddle militarily outside of their borders, mostly in Africa. They tend to be more in favour of wet works, special forces and other intelligence and diplomacy tricks, as opposed to bombastic "WOO MASSIVE INVASION, CARRIERS, TANKS, COLD WAR TACTICS DESIGNED TO FIGHT CONVENTIONAL WARS TO HUNT DOWN GUERILLAS, GENIUS" US style. Rumsfeld's idea of a slimmed down, cutting edge tech extremely professional army was actually a pretty good one, it just didn't suit the US's operational goals in either Afghanistan or Iraq, which was "temporary" occupation and training of locals. Or, let's be honest, the industrial and economic goals of the MIC. The billions upon billions of dollars that dissapear without any accountability into the US military budget aren't to "subsidize" anything but military contracts with local American industries.
It suits European powers pretty well however. To be fair though, even in France's latest intervention in Mali they had to call on the UK and the US's military transports to fill the cracks in their supply lines. Euro militaries don't have as much power projection as the US, but then again, no one else does either.