Obama goes to Moscow, Brown goes to history?

On Monday Barack Obama will begin his first visit to Russia as President of the USA and in that connection the new issue of The Economist (dated 4-10 July) has an interesting article about the complex relations between the USA and Russia since the end of the Cold War.

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13941990

In the same magazine the columnist “Bagehot” shares some thoughts on how history tends to remember British prime ministers for “a single achievement or, more often, for one defining failure”. “Anthony Eden equals the Suez crisis; Jim Callaghan connotes the ‘winter of discontent’ […]. In the end ‘Tony Blair’ will evoke Iraq, maybe with a footnote on his constitutional reforms”. The columnist sees some hope for the present Prime Minister, arguing that “Gordon Brown may be thought of more charitably by posterity than by his contemporaries – if he goes honourably”.

http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13941531