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President Donald Trump’s Venezuela regime change adventure is in danger of degenerating into a strategic, political and legal morass.

Trump gathered top national security officials and aides at an Oval Office meeting Monday evening, seeking to define next steps in a showdown now slipping out of his control, both inside the impoverished oil-rich nation and in Washington.

Before the talks, President Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan dictator, defiantly danced before a huge crowd of supporters in Caracas in a Trump-style open-air rally, shattering previous rumors he’d bowed to US calls to leave the country. “We do not want peace of slaves, nor do we want peace of colonies,” Maduro said.

The thin domestic political underpinnings of Trump’s campaign are growing more fragile as the White House fails to quell a growing controversy over a follow-up US strike that reportedly killed surviving crew members of an alleged drugs trafficking boat in the Caribbean. Trump’s Democratic critics on Capitol Hill are warning of a potential war crime. And several powerful Republicans are shaken and are signaling a rare willingness to rigorously investigate the administration.

The US standoff with Venezuela is now beginning to consume Washington after more than four months of escalating political, economic, and military pressure, epitomized by the hulking presence of the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald. R. Ford and an armada of US ships in the waters off Venezuela.

There is increasing scrutiny of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s role in the boat strikes. The former Fox News anchor was a controversial pick to run the Pentagon, and his lack of experience, abrasive manner, and rejection of some the military’s ethical and legal safeguards is threatening to make him a political burden for the president as Democrats demand his resignation.

But more broadly, Maduro’s defiance is presenting Trump, Hegseth, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Caine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and other top officials expected at the Oval Office meeting with a deepening strategic dilemma.

Trump is talking a big game.

On Thursday, he threatened attacks on drug cartel targets on land in Venezuela would begin “very soon.” He declared on Saturday the country’s airspace should be considered closed. But Maduro went nowhere. The US president — who has been sensitive in the past to any suggestion he “chickens out” after making threats — must now consider whether his saber rattling is beginning to lack credibility without a demonstration of military force that would draw him into an overseas conflict.

Maduro defying US ‘options’ to leave

Washington hopes that its military build-up so rattles Maduro that he accepts exile overseas or that inner circle generals topple him. Trump confirmed Sunday he spoke to Maduro by phone recently — but the Venezuelan strongman stayed put. Venezuelan opposition politician David Smolansky told Jim Sciutto on “The Brief” on CNN International Monday that Maduro had previously been given “options” by the United States to leave the country.

But the failure of the regime to crack so far will test Trump’s willingness to live up to his threat to do things the “hard way” as Maduro characteristically drags out negotiations and crises to weaken the will of his adversaries.

Maduro’s obduracy also raises the question of whether any level of US pressure short of military action would begin to fray his regime. One possibility is that the administration underestimated the staying power of the Maduro power base — a regular failing for US governments over the years that hoped to see the collapse of totalitarian rivals in enemy nations. Maduro will be hoping that Trump loses patience, starts looking for culprits in his inner circle and seeks his own way out.

If the president does pick military action, the idea of a full-scale invasion of Venezuela still seems unthinkable. So, does he have options that would so rattle Maduro’s security that it could change the political equation in Caracas? Or would attacks on alleged drugs trafficking sites or military bases embolden Maduro, unify public opinion around him, and make him believe he can tough it out?

The choices facing Trump are especially stark because a largely peaceful ouster of Maduro that delivered freedom to millions of Venezuelans after two decades of dictatorial rule and a restored democracy would be a foreign policy triumph. It would also send a message of US power and intent to other US foes in the region, including Cuba, and show China and Russia, which try to create regional influence and disruption, that Trump rules his geopolitical backyard. A successful Venezuela strategy could confound establishment foreign policy critics just as Trump did by bombing Iran’s nuclear plants earlier this year, a gamble that was more successful and triggered fewer dangerous consequences than many experts had feared.

But if Maduro survives the US troop buildup and intense pressure, he’d deliver a devastating statement of his own to Trump. The president’s authority would ebb. Autocrats in Beijing and Moscow, who he loves to impress, would take note. Presidents who recall aircraft carrier battlegroups from Europe and station them off Latin America amid belligerent rhetoric tend to create such credibility tests for themselves.

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