Is the U.S. invading Venezuela? Or trying to make a deal?

CARACAS, Venezuela — On the face of it, the United States appears closer than ever to mounting a military campaign to remove President Nicolás Maduro from power in Venezuela.

President Trump says he has authorized the CIA to conduct covert operations inside the Caribbean nation, and has massed troops, fighter jets and warships just off its coastline.

U.S. service members in the region have been barred from taking Thanksgiving leave. Airlines have canceled flights to Venezuela after the Federal Aviation Administration warned of a “potentially hazardous situation” there. And on Monday the White House officially designated Maduro as a member of an international terrorist group.

In Caracas, the nation’s capital, there is a palpable sense of anxiety, especially as each new bellicose pronouncement emerges from Washington.

“People are very tense,” said Rosa María López, 47, a podiatrist and mother of two. “Although no one says anything because they are afraid.”

Traffic is sparse at the Simon Bolivar Maiquetia International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, on Sunday after several international airlines canceled flights following a warning from the Federal Aviation Administration about a hazardous situation in Venezuelan airspace.

(Ariana Cubillos / Associated Press)

Trump has been presented with a set of military options by the Pentagon, a source familiar with the matter told The Times, and is said to be weighing his options. Still, his plans for Venezuela remain opaque.

Trump, even while warning of a possible military action, has also continually floated the possibility of negotiations, saying he “probably would talk” to Maduro at some point.

“I don’t rule out anything,” Trump said last week.

Now people in both the U.S. and Venezuela are wondering: is the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean the prelude to an invasion, or a bluff intended to pressure Maduro to make a deal?

There are members of the White House — especially Secretary of State Marco Rubio — who are desperate to unseat Maduro, a leftist autocrat whom the U.S. does not recognize as Venezuela’s legitimately elected president.

But other members of Trump’s team seem more intent on securing access to Venezuela’s oil riches, and keeping them from China and Russia, than pushing for regime change. Parties of that camp might be willing to accept a deal with Venezuela that does not call for Maduro’s exit and a plan for a democratic transition.

Months of U.S. saber-rattling without any direct military action against the Maduro government may be weakening the Americans’ negotiating position, said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based research group. “There is a psychological component to this operation, and it’s starting to lose its credibility,” he said. “I do fear that the regime thinks that it has weathered the worst of U.S. pressure.”

Maduro, for his part, insists he is open to dialogue. “Whoever in the U.S. wants to talk with Venezuela can do so,” he said this week. “We cannot allow the bombing and massacre of a Christian people — the people of Venezuela.”

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, speaking Friday at the presidential palace in Caracas, has insisted he is open to dialogue with the United States.

(Cristian Hernandez / Associated Press)

For years, he has refused efforts to force him from office, even in the face of punishing U.S. sanctions, domestic protests against his rule and various offensives during the first Trump administration that Caracas deemed as coup attempts. Experts say there is no evidence that Trump’s buildup of troops — or his attacks on alleged drug traffickers off of Venezuela’s coast — has weakened Maduro’s support amid the military or other hard-core backers.

Venezuela, meanwhile, has sought to use the prospect of a U.S. invasion to bolster support at home.

On Monday, top officials here took aim at the State Department’s designation of an alleged Venezuelan drug cartel as a foreign terrorist group. Rubio claims the Cartel de los Soles is “headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature and judiciary.”

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth praised the declaration for introducing “a whole bunch of new options” to fight what he described as “narco-terrorists” and “illegitimate regimes.”

The Venezuelan government says the Cartel de los Soles does not exist. Foreign Minister Yván Gil described Monday’s designation as a “ridiculous fabrication.” The U.S., he said, is using a “vile lie to justify an illegitimate and illegal intervention against Venezuela under the classic U.S. format of regime change.”

The truth is somewhere in the middle.

The Cartel de los Soles, experts say, is less a traditional cartel — with a centralized command structure directing various cells — than a shorthand term used in the media and elsewhere to describe a loose group of corrupt Venezuelan military officials implicated in the drug trade.

The name, Cartel of the Suns, derives from the sun insignia found on the uniforms of Venezuelan soldiers, much like stars on U.S. military uniforms. It has been around since the early 1990s, when Venezuela was an important trans-shipment point for Colombian cocaine bound for the U.S. market. Today, only a small portion of cocaine trafficked to the U.S. moves through Venezuela.

Venezuelan journalist Ronna Rísquez Sánchez said it is unclear whether Maduro actually directs illicit activities conducted by his military or simply allows it to transpire among his government. Either way, she said, it is “happening under his nose.”

But she did not rule out that seizing on Maduro’s possible links to drug trafficking might be a convenient “pretext” for U.S. political machinations.

For the people of Venezuela, recent weeks have seen a heightened sense of uncertainty and anguish as people ponder ever-conflicting reports about a possible U.S. strike.

More than a decade of political, social and economic upheaval has left people exhausted and numbed, often unable to believe anything they hear about the future of Maduro’s government. There is a widespread sense of resignation and a feeling that things can only get worse.

“Every week we hear they are going to get rid of Maduro, but he’s still here,” said Inés Rojas, 25, a street vendor in Caracas. “We all want a change, but a change that improves things, not makes them worse. We young people don’t have a future. The doors of immigration are closed, we are locked in here, not knowing what is going to happen.”

Mostly, people seem to want an end to the overwhelming feeling of not knowing what comes next.

“I pray every day that this uncertainty ends,” said Cristina López Castillo, 37, an unemployed office worker who favors Maduro’s removal from office. “We don’t have a future — or a present. We live every day wondering what will happen tomorrow. I have more fear of hunger than of Trump.”

Still, Maduro retains many backers — and not only among the military and political elite who have seen their loyalty rewarded with additional wealth. Many people remain thankful for the social welfare legacy of Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, and are wary of U.S. motivations in Venezuela.

“We Venezuelans do not want to be anyone’s colony, nor do we want anyone to drop bombs on us to get rid of a president,” said José Gregorio Martínez Pina, 45, a construction worker in the capital.

“Is Maduro a narco? I haven’t seen any proof,” he said. “And if they have it, they should present it, instead of having a country living under terror for weeks.”

Times staff writers Linthicum and McDonnell reported in Mexico City. Mogollón, a special correspondent, reported in Caracas. Michael Wilner in the Times’ Washington bureau also contributed reporting.