World order today increasingly resembles world disorder: Shashi Tharoor on Venezuela situation

Congress MP Shashi Tharoor said India will respond to the Venezuela crisis in line with national interest and diplomatic sensitivities. He criticized selective enforcement of international law, while the US maintains Maduro’s capture was a law-enforcement action, not a military invasion

New Delhi: Congress MP Shashi Tharoor on Monday said India will make an appropriate response to worsening situation in Venezuela, stressing that national interest and diplomatic sensitivities must guide any such decision.

“As far as the situation in Venezuela is concerned, I believe it is best left to the government to decide how to respond in India’s national interest, given the sensitivities of the countries involved,”  Tharoor said, reacting to recent developments involving Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s capturing by the US forces.

---

The former diplomat used the occasion to offer a broader critique of global geopolitics, arguing that the principles of international law and the United Nations Charter have been repeatedly undermined. “As a general principle, it is clear that international law and the UN Charter have been more often violated than upheld over the past quarter-century,” he said.

Tharoor added that the current global system has increasingly failed to live up to its stated ideals. “Sadly, what is termed the world order today increasingly resembles a world disorder,” he remarked, underlining concerns about selective enforcement of rules and growing instability in international relations. The remarks reflect India’s traditionally cautious approach to geopolitical crises, particularly those involving competing global powers and questions of sovereignty.

Meanwhile, the Donald Trump administration has sought to blunt criticism of its Venezuela operation, arguing that the arrest of Nicolas Maduro was a narrowly targeted law-enforcement action rather than the start of a war or military intervention.

Speaking on multiple US television networks over the weekend, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio rejected claims that Washington was at war with Venezuela. “There’s not a war,” Rubio said, asserting that the United States was acting against drug trafficking organisations and not the Venezuelan state.

Rubio maintained that the operation, carried out on Saturday, was conducted under US legal authority to arrest an indicted narco-trafficker and did not constitute an invasion.

He said that the US forces were deployed briefly to execute the arrest before withdrawing, and emphasized that the administration’s strategy would now rely on sanctions, maritime enforcement, and sustained economic pressure rather than military action.