DUBLIN – The spectacular rise and fall of Carlos Ghosn, "Le Cost Killer" who saved Nissan after 1999 and built a powerful partnership of the Japanese carmaker, its big French shareholder, Renault, and Japan's Mitsubishi Motors, resembles a Kabuki play, with the Japanese powers-that-be asserting themselves in the end. But Ghosn's downfall is really more like a classic Greek tragedy, with contemporary German elements. This is a story of Hubris meeting Nemesis. And the best parallel to Ghosn is German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Bill Emmott, a former editor-in-chief of The Economist, is the author of The Fate of the West.