MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Later in the broadcast, academic freedom in question as labor studies professors e-mails come under scrutiny in a labor dispute in another state. But first, the president spoke to the nation on Monday night about our military mission in Libya in a televised addressed that spelled out clearly his unwavering faith in America's power and responsibility on the global stage, unless it turns out that it was actually a speech that halfway acknowledged the limits of America's global influence.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIAll of which means that the Obama doctrine that people in the news media have been so desperate to decipher is still definitely a little bit difficult to decipher. But what have we learned then about these dramatic events taking place in the Arab world and how they shape the president's philosophy? Joining us to look into the future with a healthy dose of historical perspective is Marvin Kalb. He is Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Marvin, good to see you.

MR. MARVIN KALBIt's a pleasure to see you, Kojo. And thanks for having me again.

NNAMDIYou're welcome. President Obama gave it the old college try on Monday night, explaining to the nation why we're intervening in the rebellion taking place in Libya. Before we pick that speech apart and what people are reading into it, do you think he succeeded in making his case?

KALBI think if one asked the question why are we there, he succeeded definitely. He explained that there could have been a terrible tragedy in Benghazi, a lot of people could have been killed. Gadhafi has said openly that his troops were going to go house to house and kill all of the rebels. Well, you know, that is a terrible thing to have on your conscience if you do nothing. And so the president was making the case that given the tradition of the United States, the humane values that we like to think of as American values, that we had to do something. I think, in fairness, I think he made an excellent case for that one issue.

NNAMDII do have to tell you that once the speculation started about whether the women in the upper ranks of the administration had a great deal of influence on the president's decision and whether Susan Rice was thinking about Rwanda and others were thinking about Bosnia, the thought did pop into my head if the United States did nothing and 400 or 500,000 people were killed as a result of it that we would, given what happened in Bosnia and Rwanda, have absolutely no excuse this time at all.

KALBYeah, and absolutely. And I think that was very much on the president's mind. If you go back and take a look at the two books that he wrote before he became president, you'll find there pretty much the same thing that he said on Monday evening to the nation in that televised address, that the United States looked at what was happening in different parts of the world. He kind of made a special case for what was happening in Africa. And he said we simply cannot allow that to happen, watch from the sidelines while people are being murdered, slaughtered, for what? I mean, if the United States stands for anything, it would stand for stopping that kind of slaughter. So I think the president is consistent with his own personal beliefs and consistent also with his feeling that the United States of America stands for something in the world today, and people look to the United States for action of this sort.

NNAMDIBut it is a complex issue. Nevertheless, there was a good amount of speculation about whether we could, I guess, pinpoint the Obama doctrine that was enunciated in this speech or if he enunciated any kind of doctrine at all. What is your view?

KALBWell, my view, Kojo, is that historians will look back on this speech with a degree, not only of interest, but marvel, because he was a president of the United States saying to the American people and the world that America is no longer the powerhouse that it once was. There are distinct limits on what America can do. Time and time again, Obama spoke of our partners, our allies, that we do these things together with other nations. He did say, in fairness, that the U.S. would act alone if he determined that the national interest of the U.S. was directly negatively affected. But the thrust of his speech was to say, look, America, we are no longer the powerhouse that we were. We are still number one, but that is in comparison to other nations that are really in bad shape.

KALBBut we have to think of ourselves now, not as the country that emerged after World War II, the number one superpower, capable of doing anything. In fact, after the Vietnam War, that was the first time that the Americans came upon a problem they could not solve. They lost that war. And I think, since that time, presidents have tried very hard to say, well, it wasn't all that big a lost. We're going to move on. We're still a great country. Ronald Reagan did his thing, the two Bush's did theirs. The fact is, we're not the powerhouse we were.

KALBOne year before this president goes before the American people seeking reelection, for him to say to the American people, hey, we're not really the powerhouse we were, that takes courage, but it also may be an act of folly, because the American people may not be interested at all in hearing that. And if a Republican comes along as a candidate next year and says, what are you talking about, Mr. Obama? We're the great power we've always been. You have a collision of visions and that will be a very interesting campaign.

NNAMDIWe're talking with Marvin Kalb. He's the Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Taking your calls at 800-433-8850. Or you can go to our website, kojoshow.org. Send us a tweet @kojoshow or e-mail to kojo@wamu.org, if you'd like to join the conversion. Marvin, it's hard to detach the politics of our operation in Libya from our politics at home, particularly when there's such an intense conversation about spending and debt. To what extent or to what degree do you think our economic policies domestically are shaping our foreign policy right now and how is that different from what occurred in the past?

KALBI think the difference, Kojo, is that in the past we always believe that we had the money to do it. And we spent the money whether it was off budget or not. President George W. Bush prosecuted two wars without technically spending a nickel because all of the money was off budget. When Obama came in, he was saddled with huge economic problems. We know about the deep recession. It is interesting to me that the Pentagon had to put out figures yesterday saying that so far in Libya, we have only spent $600 billion. And they put it, Kojo, in that we've only spent $600 billion.

KALBThen the numbers came out about Afghanistan. Afghanistan is now, if I'm not mistaken, $120 billion a year. And we've there now 10 years and counting. This is monumental when we're still at roughly 9 percent unemployment and the Republican Party up on the Hill is saying, in effect, we're broke. Now that's a silly comment. You know, I'll say America's not broke. But politically, it plays very well.

NNAMDIIs there any historical precedent for this at all, domestic policy, the domestic economic situation affecting our foreign policy like this?

KALBWell, I'm thinking back to the Depression and what was happening then. We were beginning to emerge out of the Depression as we went into World War II.

NNAMDICorrect.

KALBAnd that was a heavy duty production operation so we were able to build our way out of the Depression. Since that time, I don't believe that this country has ever faced the economic problems that it has at the same time as it's engaged in three military operations around the world. That is to say something very big.

NNAMDIIt's been a pretty scrambled series of events for the past several months from the first protest in Tunisia to the toppling of the Mubarak regime in Egypt, to Libya, to Yemen, to Bahrain. First, what do you -- think about what's going on in the Arab world right now, Marvin.

KALBI think that what we're watching is one of the most fundamental revolutions, upheavals, renaissance, whatever you want to call it, something huge is running from Morocco in the West all the way, you can even say to Afghanistan in the East. I think that what we've got now is an opportunity to see the Arab world attach itself to modernity. To say, in effect, we don't want to be where we were. We're conscious of where we were. We want to go forward. And that would be an absolutely huge step.

KALBAt the moment, I feel that you can't say one thing about all of the countries in upheaval in the Arab world because each one has its own characteristics. But you can say that something fundamental, large, historic is taking place. It is possible that for the first time in perhaps hundreds of years, the Arab people are saying we want to run ourselves. We don't want you there. We want to do it ourselves. Now if that is what is happening, I take my hat off to them. I think that's a spectacular step forward.

NNAMDIAnd I'm glad you mentioned that at one level you have to look at the individual countries individually because we're looking at complex issues and we have to look at them in their complexity. Nevertheless, while doing this, there has been pressure on the president to keep a running commentary of sorts going. How would you grade this administration's ability to react and to roll with all that's been going on?

KALBYou know, we used to say about President Obama that he does great speeches. And he's terrific standing up before a camera with a teleprompter and telling everybody what's wonderful about them and wonderful about the U.S. as well. This is different. And I think the president is very well aware that he's playing with fire. That while there has been a democratic revolution in Egypt, what has now happened is that people say, wow, we had this revolution. Where is our democracy? And they want it now.

NNAMDIYep.

KALBSo the United States has to say to them, do that now. At the same time, they want to do it themselves. They don't want the United States hanging around. Can they do it themselves? Is it possible? One of the things that comes up, Kojo, historically, and in recent decades in the Arab world is that when something dramatic happens of a positive nature and then you wait a month or two or three or four, and you get back to what had been, people are very disenchanted.

KALBAnd the fear that I have now is that without something dramatic, exciting, something that proves that the revolution makes sense, it was the right thing to do -- people have to have jobs. Young people cannot be walking around the street listening to sermons at various mosques, painting pictures of glorious things that are going to happen after you die, no. They want to live now. And so the opportunity for them to live now is huge...

NNAMDII could not...

KALB...will the season.

NNAMDII could not help being struck by reports today that the CIA is now in Libya essentially trying to figure out who the rebels are because it's one thing to support democracy in Libya. It's another thing entirely to know who is likely to rise to power and what their objectives and policies are likely to be.

KALBExactly. And I was saying earlier that the first part of the president's speech, I thought, was terrific. He answered why we went in. What he did not answer is, what are we going to do now? Because if there is, in fact, the kind of trouble that the rebels have -- what is extraordinary, Kojo, remember that on Monday of this week, the rebels were moving west toward Tripoli. They were taking over, they were in charge. Four days later, they're on their tail running the other way toward Benghazi.

KALBSo we don't know who these people are. We don't know their strength. The president, I think, wisely sends in smart people to try to figure out what is going on, but they don't know. And we're getting -- every day that we continue the bombing, that CIA people are sent in, if we then begin to provide arms to the rebels -- which is very likely. The President has said, we're not sending ground troops, but there are Americans on the ground. And you can call them what you like, but you're beginning to take steps in an uncomfortable direction.

NNAMDIGot to take a short break. When we come back, we'll continue our conversation with Marvin Kalb about all things foreign and domestic policy. You can call us at 800-433-8850. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation with Marvin Kalb. He is the Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, has spent 30 years as an award-winning reporter for CBS and NBC news. Marvin, how do you think the media environment has affected the president's approach? People have talked about how much technology shaped the events taking place abroad in the Arab world. But how do you feel this has shaped our response to them here in the United States and how has it shaped what we've come to expect from the president?

KALBIt has loaded upon the White House a responsibility to react to almost every event in the world. So the White House now has what no White House has ever had in history. It now has instantaneous access to issues around the world. There is the expectation then on the part of the American people, who get more and more used to all of this new gadgetry, to look to the White House for an answer. So in the old days, if a president or a secretary of state had a day or perhaps even two days to think about major problems, now you do not have that luxury.

KALBYou have to think about it immediately and you have to come in with a response immediately. That's the effect that events translated through the new technology has on the White House. But, Kojo, think about the power of this new technology to transform the Arab world. Just the other day, Brent Scowcroft, who's a very cautious man, the national security advisor for the first President Bush, Brent Scowcroft said, we can find lots of major reasons why the Arab world is in upheaval now, but the single biggest one may well be the new technology.

KALBThe idea that people connect with other people. If you live in a country in which you're afraid, one of the things you don't want to do is share your fears with other people. But if you now lived in a country where over the transom in so many different ways, just in the ether, you get information instantly available to you. What's going on with the Arabs over there? What about the Arabs in this place? They don't any longer feel alone. They feel part of a broad movement and it is. So the new technology is a big time player in the way the Arab world has been transformed and what may yet happen there?

NNAMDIAs someone who learned the television journalism trade from people like Edward R. Murrow, what do you make of how the turbulence in the Arab world has given rise to Al-Jazeera's even greater prominence and the journalist...

KALBOh, boy.

NNAMDI...that that network has been deploying to cover the events?

KALBYeah, Al-Jazeera has come of age now. With this Arab revolution, there is no question about that. A year or so ago, I spent a couple of days at their central headquarters in Doha, in Qatar in the Persian Gulf. Their reporters are, for the most part, ex-BBC journalists.

NNAMDIYep.

KALBThey've had a lot of experience with the BBC working in Europe and they know a lot. They are professionals. They also realized at the very beginning that their message goes out to the Arab world. Therefore they want to be in sync with the sympathies of the Arab world. So what they would do, would try to find as much anti-Israel or Israel sort of beating up the Arabs. You get a picture of that, then you loop it. And you put it on over and over again. The impression then is that this is happening all the time. And that had a huge effect in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera became the number one...

NNAMDICredibility.

KALB…credibility. It has it in spades. What they did -- they are very smart people, very smart, very professional. What they did was take their best reporters, all of them Arabic-speaking, unlike most of the American reporters, and put them right smack in the middle of the revolution. So that it's not just the Arab world that gains from Al-Jazeera, we gain from Al- Jazeera as well. And it is something totally new. I'm amazed as I watch television now, American television networks going to Al-Jazeera reporters, proudly showing Al-Jazeera film. We never would've done that before, never.

NNAMDIHere is Joan. Joan is in Tysons Corner, Va. Joan, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

JOANHi, I'm definitely sure of his review about the new media. But I'm wondering how the lack of the influence of Richard Holbrooke who died, I believe, in November, has affected our foreign policy.

NNAMDIThe death of Ambassador Holbrooke?

JOAN(unintelligible) ...

NNAMDIYes, we hear that. Here's Marvin.

KALBMy sense is, Joan, that that has left us short. I have -- always have had enormous respect for Ambassador Holbrooke. I thought that what he was trying to do in Afghanistan, especially, was provide a climate for some kind of respectable American pull out without Al-Qaeda taking over within two or three months. And the absence of somebody with his energy and his creativity is felt at the state department to this day. And likely to be felt for a good bit of time longer.

NNAMDIJoan, thank you very much for your call. We got this e-mail from Beth in D.C. who says, "I like Secretary Clinton's argument that a big part of our motive for joining the NATO countries in Libya is that those NATO countries joined us in the original Afghanistan operation, even though none of them had been attacked. In the case of Libya, it's clear that the threat of refugees flooding into southern Europe is huge."

NNAMDI"Especially in places like Italy and Spain where North African and Albanian refugees have been streaming in for a long time." What do you think of perspective which seems to have zero appeal for conservatives?

KALBWell, I think, the -- what we have just heard seems to me to be totally accurate. Secretary of State Clinton has made the point time and time again that if we had done nothing and people have had to flee from Benghazi and people from Tripoli going into Tunisia. Tunisia and Egypt are now very fragile societies. And Clinton believes that this would've been too much for them to bare.

KALBAnd so that was one reason, as she explains it, why we went in and began to bomb and save the people in Benghazi. That seems to me to be a perfectly acceptable explanation. But when you go back to 9/11, we got the support of NATO and we got the support of many, many countries around the world. There were over 40 countries, as I remember, that instantly joined the American effort in Afghanistan.

KALBThat was because they realized that the United States had been attacked by people based in Afghanistan and we had an absolutely right of self defense. That is not necessarily the case now. And that's why I think there is so many questions with American troops in Iraq. America -- leaving American troops in Afghanistan, we don’t know how many will actually leave in July. There's a big argument now between the Pentagon and the White House on this very issue.

KALBSo we are, as I said at the very beginning, we are no longer capable of doing exactly what we want. We can't any longer do it. And it seems to me that the American people are going to have to adjust to that fact.

NNAMDIHere is Grant in Arlington, Va. Grant, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

GRANTYes. A few minutes ago Professor Kalb made a comment about, in his speech the other night, President Obama conceded that the United States is no longer the worlds super power. And he says it was on -- after World War II. And a couple months ago, there was some news coverage by republican presidential hopefuls criticizing Obama's speech on American exceptionalism, taking his comments out of context.

GRANTI wanted to get, like, Professor's thoughts on another interpretation of Obama's speech, which I think is a more refreshing annunciation of a practical foreign policy. Specifically, every U.S. -- every post World War II president has made absolute statements about protecting the interests of liberty, freedom and democracy around the world.

KALBYes.

NNAMDIAnd that the United States will always intervene in those circumstances. But, you know, as the professor just said, we can't do that and we haven't done that. And what -- it makes the U.S. look like hypocrites when we don't. I wonder if instead, Obama's balancing tests as he, you know, that there's some sort of balancing element as he articulated it the other night, is more...

NNAMDIOkay.

GRANT...of a realistic and a, you know, will be a refreshing take for the American public about how the United States will view foreign policy going forward.

NNAMDIWell, you said, refreshing. Marvin pointed out the reality of the situation, but also hasten to make the point that with an election year coming up, he doesn't know how that is going to sell with the American voters.

KALBSure. And if there were the kind of discussion between the democrat and the republican, politicians who have diametrically opposite views, we are going to make the assumption that the American people will be able to see through the nonsense and really come up with a sensible decision about whom to vote for. But that is not necessarily the case. We know now from the new technology, from the sophisticated uses of politician -- of the new technology, that you can sell just about anything and people may end up buying it.

KALBI'm not saying that we're not smart or anything like that. I'm simply saying that we live in a new world where we have to get used to the sophistication of this new technology. Also we are in a -- still are in a fragile, tough economic environment. The President was saying, the other day, we no longer can do everything. I am positive -- I'm positive and just feel it, that next year, a republican is going to quote the President from that speech last Monday and say, look at what he thinks, that we're not great anymore. We are great. Hip, hip, hooray. And vote for me.

NNAMDICan't let you go without talking about Russia because you spent a lot of time reporting there. President Dmitri Medvedev, this week, called for a series of reforms that apparently steps on Vladmir Putin's toes. It's some -- it's clear that there's some daylight going -- being put between Putin and President Medvedev. And what also they feel should happen in Libya. What are we learning about their relationship?

KALBThey are getting testier and testier by the week. And we’ve talked about this, Kojo...

NNAMDIYes.

KALB...about the way in which these two men have been vying for power. With Medvedev, aware that it was Putin who put him in.

NNAMDIYep.

KALBI mean, it wasn't a free election or something like that. We haven't had that in Russia yet. But on Libya, there was a clear difference of opinion expressed by both men. With Putin, just slapping down the whole idea of what the U.S. was doing. And Medvedev, conscious of what's going on in the southern part of Russia where there are also rebellions. You got to be very careful because if we go to a rebellion in the southern part of Russia in a place like Chechnya, for example, or Ossetia, and thousands of people are killed, might not we ask once again, won't the international community step in and do something? And there's a fundamental difference of opinion between these two men and it is now emerging.

NNAMDIA situation to keep watching closely. Marvin Kalb is Edward R. Murrow Professor Emeritus at the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University. Marvin, thank you so much for joining us.

KALBThank you, Kojo. Thank you.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll look at why it is that public universities in Michigan are being asked to submit e-mails about what their labor professors -- labor studies professors are saying about a confrontation involving unions in Madison, Wis. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.