Trump and Maduro are both amassing military forces as tensions build in the Caribbean

(CNN)- As President Donald Trump weighs military action inside Venezuela, building up forces in the Caribbean and flying B-52 bombers off the country’s coast this week, Nicolás Maduro is responding in kind, repositioning troops, mobilizing “millions” of militia and denouncing US activity in the region – a sign of defiance from the strongman as the two leaders are locked in a standoff.

Trump administration officials have privately acknowledged that the intensifying US pressure campaign is aimed at ousting Maduro, a goal that was also a target of Trump’s first term in office when the White House recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of the country in 2019. But as the Trump team ratchets up the pressure this fall, Maduro has in turn ramped up the rhetoric and propaganda for Venezuelans while calling for new military exercises by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, which has some 123,000 members.

In recent weeks, the US military has moved warships and other weaponry into the region and has targeted boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs. Then on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that he’d authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory.

“We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control,” the president told reporters Wednesday.

Maduro has claimed that his volunteer militias now have more than 8 million reservists, though experts have called into question that number as well as the quality of the troops’ training. As of October 17, 20 out of 23 Venezuelan states have been militarized as part of the Maduro’s military mobilizations, called Independence 200.

On his Truth Social account last month, Trump mocked a video of women, some who appeared to be overweight, running with guns during a purported training for the Venezuelan militia.

The Trump administration has been quietly laying the groundwork for potential military action inside Venezuela for months by tying Maduro to drug traffickers and cartels that officials have designated as terror groups who pose an imminent threat to the US. But to date, there is no indication that Trump has decided to take that step or target the Venezuelan leader directly.

Instead, the goal has been to pressure Maduro to step down on his own, sources told CNN, in part by establishing a credible threat of US military action if he does not. The recent strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean are a clear message to Maduro, the sources said, noting the administration has been very intentional about linking the Venezuelan leader to trafficking groups and cartels.

Trump said Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to operate inside Venezuela to clamp down on the flows of migrants and drugs from the South American nation, but stopped short of saying they would be attempting to remove Maduro. The remarks are Trump’s most expansive comments on his decision to expand the CIA’s authority to conduct lethal targeting and carry out covert action in the region, which CNN first reported last week.

In a televised speech Wednesday, Maduro denounced what he described as the CIA’s record of regime change and coups d’état around the world.

“But our people are clear, united, and aware. They have the means to once again defeat this open conspiracy against the peace and stability of Venezuela,” he said on state television.

‘We don’t sleep well’

In Venezuela, daily life has continued despite the looming possibility of armed conflict with the United States. Near downtown Caracas, at the Teresa Carreño Theater, a sold-out musical premiered just days after a well-known salsa party brought together more than 1,000 people in the west of the city.

But Venezuelans are increasingly discussing the US warships in the Caribbean Sea and the fear of a possible US attack. “Venezuelans live in anxiety thinking about what might happen,” said Ivonne Caña.

Caña, who is a cook, said she lives in uncertainty and, worried about her family, has been buying a little more food than usual to stock up at home. The fear, she said, is felt most at night: “We don’t sleep well.”

Some Venezuelans are cautiously showing their support for the US pressure on Maduro. In recent days, banners bearing messages such as “It’s happening… freedom loading 95%” have been displayed on at least 10 university campuses across the country — a form of peaceful protest in spaces where political issues are seldom addressed due to fear of government reprisal.

Meanwhile, Maduro has further cracked down on civil liberties in Venezuela. At the end of September, the government announced that the president had signed a decree of “external commotion,” which he described as “a constitutional defense tool in case the country faces a military aggression.”

The state of emergency decree would allow Maduro to restrict constitutional guarantees and, according to analysts, would grant him broad political, social and economic powers.

As Maduro has accused the US administration of trying to steal the country’s oil wealth, the nearby American military presence has drawn closer. Three US Air Force B-52 bombers flew off the coast of Venezuela for more than four hours on Wednesday, according to open-source flight data reviewed by CNN. The bombers took off from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana before dawn.

Two of them kept their location beacons activated inside Venezuela’s flight information region (FIR), at one point coming within 53 miles of La Orchila Island, where Maduro’s forces carried out drills last month.

At their closest point, the planes flew 132 miles from the Venezuelan mainland, at around 11:20 a.m. local time. The bombers remained in a part of Venezuela’s flight information region that is international airspace but controlled by the country’s aviation authority. Venezuela’s FIR extends far beyond the country’s airspace.

Multiple sources told CNN that the recent US military strikes on drug boats are just the beginning of a larger effort to rid the region of narcotics trafficking and potentially dislodge Maduro from power. The military has carried out at least six strikes to date on six separate boats in the Caribbean.

The Trump administration’s war on drugs

The argument that drug traffickers pose an imminent threat to Americans is at the core of the Trump administration’s classified legal justification for carrying out military strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean — and potentially beyond.

The Justice Department opinion also includes a secret and expansive list of groups the Trump administration argues can now be treated as enemy combatants, rather than criminals, and thus summarily killed without due process at the president’s direction.

The opinion is significant, legal experts said, because it appears to justify an open-ended war against a secret list of groups and potentially offers a pretext for unilateral US military action against a broad array of targets in the region.

At the Pentagon, some military lawyers, including international law experts within DoD’s Office of General Counsel, have raised concerns about the legality of the lethal strikes on suspected drug traffickers, sources familiar with the matter said.

But multiple Pentagon lawyers previously told CNN that internal dissent is unlikely to dissuade the Trump administration from continuing its military campaign in the region.

The latest indication of internal concerns over these strikes emerged on Thursday when the admiral overseeing US Southern Command, which has responsibility for forces in the Caribbean, announced he is retiring just one year into his tenure.

Tensions had been simmering between Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Adm. Alvin Holsey for weeks before the admiral announced he was leaving, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

Hegseth did not believe Holsey was moving quickly or aggressively enough to combat drug traffickers in the Caribbean, and he complained about not being given the information he needed about the operations, the sources said. But SOUTHCOM was concerned about the operations not being lawful, the sources added.

Then, on Friday, the US military detained two survivors of its sixth known strike of alleged drug boats in the Caribbean. This is the first time an American strike has not immediately killed everyone on board, and the two survivors, CNN has reported, are currently detained on a US Navy vessel, raising a host of new legal questions to an already murky picture.