Sarkozy’s dream of taming America is doomed

The American model of lightly regulated capitalism may be in disrepute, says Irwin Stelzer. But the French President’s ambition is deluded

French presidents/emperors are given to delusion. Napoleon thought he could conquer the Russian winter. Charles de Gaulle thought he heard voices anointing him the leader of the Free French, and later deluded himself into believing that he — not the British and the Americans, not Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt — liberated France from the Nazis, to whom the massive French army had quickly surrendered just a few years earlier.

Most popular

Druin Burch

Lucy Letby and the killer nurse I worked with

And now we have Nicolas Sarkozy. Taller than Napoleon, shorter than de Gaulle, but equally susceptible to delusions. And more than one. The first is that he can turn back the tide of globalisation, hold back the tides of capital that wash across national borders.