The US President Joe Biden hopes that threats of painful consequences will deter his counterpart Vladimir Putin from entering Ukraine after severing Russia from the world's banking system.
With tens of thousands of Russian troops amassed on Ukraine's border, the Biden administration accepted talks with Moscow in Geneva next week, which has proposed agreements to limit NATO's expansion.
The US officials say they are willing to discuss concerns. Few see the Biden administration as interested in grand agreements, with its aim instead of changing Putin's calculus and, at best, bringing greater stability to relations.
The approach is a threat to impose sanctions on Putin, in Biden's words, like he's never seen if he encroaches further into Ukraine, where Russia already supports an insurgency that has claimed more than 13,000 lives since 2014.
Bill Taylor, a former US ambassador to Ukraine, said the main idea was to convince Putin that the costs would be very high for an invasion.
Taylor, who is now vice president for strategic stability and security at the US Institute of Peace, said that the whole idea is to make it clear to Mr. Putin that he has a choice.
One immediate measure would be sanctions against Putin's inner circle and their families, depriving them of the right to travel or keep money in the West.
Germany has indicated that the cost of a Ukraine invasion could be ending the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia that is nearly complete despite years of criticism from the United States and Eastern European nations.
One far-reaching option mulled in the West would be to cut Russia off the SWIFT network that connects the world's banks, a step earlier taken against Iran but not attempted against a major global economy.
Unless Russia brazenly defies warnings, the action through SWIFT, based in Belgium, would hurt third-nation businesses and be unlikely to gain global consensus.
Taylor said that the Russians will be the big loser in that decision.
Matthew Rojansky, director of the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said Russia had already inured itself to some economic pressure since 2014 when the West imposed sanctions over its seizure of Crimea.
He said that the Biden administration had been effective by communicating directly to Russia that there would be severe and inevitable consequences.
You don't want a big dark, scary cloud, but you're not sure if the storm is coming. He said that you want to have a 100 percent probability of a lightning strike.
No one has ever doubted that the United States can hurt Russia economically. History has taught us that the only chance it has in working is to be a threat in advance. If you do it to them after they've already invaded and annexed Crimea, you're not going to get them to do that. Some hawkish members of Congress say that Biden should have already imposed sanctions as a result of moving troops.
Russia, which insists that the United States has not pledged to expand NATO after the Soviet Union collapsed, has sought guarantees that the alliance will not accept Ukraine or establish bases in more former Soviet republics.
Western officials say Russia can't tell Ukraine if it wants to join NATO. European partners in NATO, which will meet with Russia next week, have made clear they are unlikely to accept Ukraine's accession.
Rojansky said the United States needed to be careful not to take the very actions behind Putin's unease, such as moving on NATO.
Biden, who has ruled out sending troops to Ukraine, could share more intelligence with Kyiv, send troops to NATO nations bordering Russia or even arm irregular Ukrainian forces batting Moscow, Taylor said.
Taylor said of Putin, if he decides to invade, he's going to get exactly what he doesn't want.