This is Part Two of a look at how the change in U.S. administration will impact global humanitarian issues. See Life without George W: Humanitarian wars.

So far, U.S. President Barack Obama has said, and repeatedly said, all the right things. Even though he is a politician, many have taken him at his word. I guess this is what they call hope.

On issues relating to international aid, the president finds many areas to agree upon with other people: the real roots of terrorism; core principles of human rights; dangers to the environment; the importance of the Millennium Development Goals; and the need for U.N. reform that lifts up the institution rather than submitting it to one country's needs.

That's a bit of a change from the past eight years.

But is this view of the most powerful individual on the planet a little too rosy?

Obama's problem is not so much his outlook on the world and the way the United States should work within it, but rather the sheer number of issues before him.

Take his pledge to double U.S. money for international aid to $50 billion by 2012, which is already under threat.

The pledge - which includes additional money to support primary education, HIV/AIDS, agriculture, enterprise development and the promotion of democracy, health, energy and the environment - was made in the midst of the economic boom of the summer of 2007. Since then, we have had the food-price crisis and the oil-price crisis, and both (especially the latter) have prompted mumblings of self-interest-first from major donor countries.

Then, of course, the cork popped from the financial world and we realised all that was inside was not vintage champagne but rather a cheap and nasty Chardonnay, sold in bulk with a plastic screw-top and not worth the container it was carried in.

Our economic prophets of doom, those same who 18 months ago were telling us of the continued expansion of capitalist paradise on earth, are pretty sure we have not yet reached the bottom of this bottle.

There are now so many issues on Obama's agenda - some of which have already been allocated a few hundred billion dollars from the national box-under-the-mattress, and many more demanding a few trillion dollars more - that one wonders if he can actually meet his international aid pledge.

When pressed during the last weeks of the election, one of the few items the Obama/Biden ticket singled out as especially "cuttable" was money for international aid.

We also need to look once again at the amount being pledged.

The U.S. international aid budget for 2007 was $23.5 billion. Double that and you get $47 billion, $3 billion shy of the $50 billion mentioned in the rhetoric surrounding the pledge. But we'll forgive this rounding-up; it reads better on press releases.

More important is the fact that $7 billion of this money is for debt relief, which is not international aid at all. As you'll probably remember from your elementary mathematics, two times nothing is still nothing.

We should also remember that even if Obama does deliver on his pledge of $50 billion by 2012, that will still be only just over half of what the United States and others committed to nearly 40 years ago. (See Life without George W: Humanitarian wars for more on this.)

Yet despite this, in the spirit of post-inauguration euphoria, I am willing to side-step these issues of $$$ and take a quick look at Obama's worldview. Is there anything else to be worried about?

WALKING THE WALK

Obama does talk and write about the need to "reverse the view of American arrogance and obstructionism". But his frequent calls for American Leadership (especially when addressing domestic audiences) are a little too enthusiastic for some, even those who acknowledge that on so many issues we can't do without U.S. leadership.

We could also be concerned about Obama's strong support for Israel, which might suggest a continuance of the previous view of America's "honest-broker" status (which means agreeing something with Israel and then telling the Palestinians about it). I hope Obama said this just to get elected.

His desire to better integrate U.S. civilian and military capacities will also need to be watched to ensure it doesn't mean the continued erosion of the humanitarian space.

Finally, he has had the habit of saying how important it is lift up common humanity as the key to America's own security, in a way that suggests - if examined in a particularly cynical mood - that common humanity itself is not so important.

I admit this is a nitpicking within a nuance. We know there has been a change.

We are sure the Obama administration will not perpetuate the remarkably careless attitude the previous one had towards human suffering and humanitarian need.

(We should recall that if Nero fiddled while Rome burnt, George W probably hit a bogey at a par four dog-leg to the right as black New Orleans sank.)

Neither are we likely to see the Homeland Security Advisory System (the "Terro-metre") as a motif of the Obama presidency.

That system was designed to inform everyone of the many layers of red alert there could be, and Fox News was on hand to remind us that crimson was really more dangerous than scarlet.

(I fondly remember the days of watching Fox in Afghanistan and being too afraid to make a cup of tea in case terror levels went up exponentially while hunting for the Earl Grey.)

Obama has already sent some clear, positive signals.

By immediately ordering the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, he suggested the words "human rights" need to mean something in practice. By allowing funding for organisations performing or promoting abortions abroad, he suggested that science rather than ideology will drive aid for global health.

Yet there is still one nagging, unresolved concern.

Time and again Obama talks of international aid being about more than money. Rather, it is about exporting the "benefits of globalisation" to all.

At the same time, many economics pundits have stated that Obama's first goal is to restore confidence in the American model. But wasn't it the American model - global capitalism largely unfettered by effective regulation - that got us into this financial mess?

Is this exactly what Mr Obama wants to export? Let's hope not.

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