The deconfining transition in non-Abelian gauge theory is known to occur by a
condensation of Wilson lines. By expanding around an appropriate Wilson line
background, it is possible at large N to analytically continue the confining
phase to arbitrarily high temperatures, reaching a weak coupling confinement
regime. This is used to study the high temperature partition function of an
SU(N) electric flux tube. It is found that the partition function corresponds
to that of a string theory with a number of world-sheet fields that diverges at
short distance.Comment: 13 page