Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has moved to harden his personal defenses and centralize control as Washington’s threats of military action intensify. According to people familiar with internal deliberations, Mr. Maduro has rotated sleeping quarters, changed phones, and expanded the role of Cuban security and counterintelligence within his immediate detail and across sensitive military nodes, precautions meant to blunt a precision strike or special-operations raid while discouraging internal betrayal. Publicly, the choreography is different. Mr. Maduro has favored surprise appearances, prerecorded broadcasts, and buoyant rallies over scheduled events, cultivating an image of ease even as U.S. warships patrol regional waters and maritime interdictions increase. The contrast, tightened security behind the scenes, theatrical nonchalance onstage, reflects a presidency practiced in crisis management and message control after more than a decade of rolling political and economic shocks. The standoff with Washington arrives after back-channel contacts failed to yield a negotiated exit. Earlier discussions reportedly explored constitutional mechanisms, including a recall vote later in the decade, that could have structured a transition while preserving Mr. Maduro’s leverage. Those talks faltered, and the Trump administration has since escalated pressure, casting Venezuela’s leadership as complicit in “narcoterrorism” and tying interdiction strikes at sea to regime conduct. Caracas, for its part, has responded by tightening internal discipline, amplifying a narrative of sovereignty under threat, and leaning more heavily on Havana. Mr. Maduro’s survival strategy has long combined coercion, patronage, and institutional engineering. He consolidated control over chavismo’s factions, repressed dissent, and relied on the security services to deter mass mobilization, even as he introduced selective market adjustments to stabilize a collapsed economy. The armed forces, granted stewardship over lucrative sectors from mining to logistics, have been bound to the presidency by a blend of enrichment and impunity, even as corruption allegations multiplied. The political cost has been severe. Independent media have been dismantled, civil society constrained, and prominent opponents barred from office. Most consequentially, Mr. Maduro ignored an electoral defeat last year, eviscerating residual claims to democratic legitimacy. The resulting gap, power retained, consent withdrawn, now shapes every strategic choice: concessions risk unraveling control, while escalation deepens isolation without resolving the underlying crisis of acceptance. Cuba’s enlarged footprint within the presidential security architecture underscores that dilemma. It may reduce immediate coup risk and enhance counterintelligence, yet it also signals reliance on external guardians at a moment when domestic authority is contested. The optics, Cuban officers embedded at critical nodes, Venezuelan counterintelligence recalibrated for loyalty checks, will harden external perceptions of a securitized state and complicate any path back to institutional normalization. For now, Caracas is betting on endurance. By projecting calm, tightening the inner ring, and exploiting divisions among opponents at home and abroad, Mr. Maduro seeks to outlast the latest surge of pressure as he has previous rounds. Whether that bet holds will depend less on stagecraft than on fundamentals he has yet to repair: an economy still brittle, institutions hollowed, and a citizenry that, by his own former allies’ admission, has withdrawn its consent.