The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that the European Union has a dream: Fortress Europe, a plan to make the EU largely self-sufficient in weapons and replace the United States as the dominant power in NATO. The Globe's Eric Reguly writes that the decoupling is already under way. EU leaders are in a low-grade panic to get moving on the project, knowing that it is years late and that Emmanuel Macron was right: In 2017, shortly after he and Mr. Trump were first elected, the French President warned about "the gradual and inevitable disengagement by the United States" and pushed for "Europe's autonomous operating capabilities." Joe Biden cozied up to the EU and NATO and Mr. Macron looked like an alarmist. Then came Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the re-election of Mr. Trump. The EU's calculus changed virtually overnight, and the bloc is now scrambling to fund its ReArm Europe project. Money may not be the problem, but hard-to-break ties to the United States are. The sales of everything from fighter jets to air-defence missiles made fortunes for Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics. It appears that Europe is going with the pay more, wait longer, option and doing so is the right strategy.