Since November, the administration has held more than 300 “diplomatic engagements” with partners and allies. Biden has sent troops to bolster jittery NATO allies in Eastern Europe. And the White House has used information as a weapon of deterrence, declassifying and disclosing intelligence to disrupt possible Russian operations in real time.

Andrea Kendall-Taylor, a former deputy national intelligence officer for Russia, described this as an effort to “build a common threat picture.”

That much has worked so far. European countries that might otherwise have gone wobbly, notably Germany, have agreed to impose severe sanctions should Putin decide to invade.

“Trump couldn’t have done this,” said Daniel Fried, a longtime Russia expert who retired in 2017 as the State Department’s coordinator for sanctions policy. “Trump wouldn’t have been interested.”