Will Barack Obama go beyond George W. Bush and support India for a permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) when he visits New Delhi next month? While that is the hope, nobody's betting on it.
When Mr Bush was the President, his secretary of state Condoleezza Rice had said that Washington supported Japan but it did not endorse the other three members of the Group of Four - India, Brazil and Germany. The then undersecretary of state Nicholas Burns had followed it up by saying that the US "will likely support adding two or so permanent members". Not much appears to have changed. Although Mr Obama sets store by multilateralism - "with emphasis on the role that the United Nations" can play, as the Norwegian Nobel committee had said while announcing the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for him, Washington has stopped short of endorsing India's bid.
On Tuesday, the US state department spokesperson Philip Crowley did not venture beyond saying that "we are well aware of India's aspirations".
For its part, New Delhi maintains it is not unduly anxious about Mr Obama's equivocation on the issue. There is a view here, represented by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee, that India should not hanker after the permanent UNSC berth; that it will eventually come India's way.
External affairs minister S.M. Krishna holds a similar view but although he describes India's election on Tuesday as a non-permanent UNSC member as "a step forward", he is acutely aware of the challenges ahead.
He concedes that achieving the goal "will take quite some time" because out of the Permanent Five (P-5) only France and the UK have extended support to India's candidature so far.