Washington ? President Bush’s drive to bring down Iraq’s Saddam Hussein has disrupted political and economic patterns around the world without a shot being fired. Think of this: To find leaders who put market forces and profit above all else, you have to look to Moscow and Beijing today.

Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Jiang Zemin navigate through the fog of almost-war with their eyes firmly fixed on favorable economic outcomes. They shift their positions on Iraq as need arises. They place that Arab nation’s fate low on a list of priorities dominated by long-term access to Western markets, technology and financing.

Meanwhile the leaders of the wealthy countries being chased by Russia and China stubbornly pursue big power politics to the neglect of big power economics. Talk of trade boycotts, currency upheaval and financial retaliation fills the air as the political elites of Britain, France, Germany and the United States argue bitterly over strategy and tactics in the Middle East.

This chatter underlines the failure of Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroeder and George W. Bush to offer convincing economic policies to underpin, parallel or offset their conflicting political programs. They should be able to handle Iraq without losing sight of the needs of their own and others’ economies. But they display a troubling tunnel vision.

Some dislocation is understandable. President Bush has set aside detailed discussion of the costs involved in disarming Iraq until he has accomplished his goal. Nothing must distract from getting this dangerous job done as rapidly and as thoroughly as possible, his aides say.

This single-minded pursuit of regime change has brought a new tone and focus to Washington. Obstructing Bush’s policy could now impede or destroy a career in government, at least for the life of this administration. “Don’t mess up Iraq” has become the watchword of the capital’s policy-makers, budget-writers and bureaucrats.

In many respects, the underlying strength of the U.S. economy continues to resist the shocks of 9-11 and its consequences, the collapse of the stock market bubble and ballooning federal deficits. Bush obviously hopes that the Iraq campaign will not be a significant drag on an economy expected in many estimates to grow at 2.5 percent this year.

But hopes that 2003 might be a year of coordinated global economic recovery as well as the moment of decision for Britain’s entry into the European Union’s single-currency zone are rapidly fading. National leaders show more interest in playing to domestic audiences and besting each other than in working together on macroeconomics. Citizens and corporations alike see overt disunity at the top as new cause for holding back on spending and investment.

Bush emphasizes electorate-pleasing tax cuts as the only arrow in his policy quiver. That undermines confidence here and abroad. So does his failure to address the costs of war in Iraq and the galloping budget and current-account deficits. He can decently wait no longer to engender a sense of shared sacrifice among citizens he proposes to lead into war in weeks, not months.

Just as the president’s talk of war muffles discussion of the economy here, Chancellor Schroeder talks antiwar to try to distract Germany from its deepening financial woes. But the German press and public have turned on him savagely for mishandling both the economy and his diplomacy with Washington.

What began as a personal feud between Bush and Schroeder has mushroomed into a U.S.-German problem and a domestic crisis of confidence in the recently re-elected chancellor’s ability to fix anything. German firms and lobbying groups are taking out ads on this side of the Atlantic to distance themselves from Schroeder and to recall the importance of the economic ties that bind the two nations. German executives say they are thinking of moving firms abroad rather than risk being pulled down by a plunging economy.

“Schroeder won re-election with the votes of the unemployed and the poor, who will resist the welfare and labor reforms we need,” says one German chief executive officer. “He combined the antiwar vote with the anti-American vote of the ex-communist east. These are his constituencies and he will not fight them.”

Deep divisions in Europe over U.S.-U.K. policy on Iraq have encouraged Prime Minister Blair to abandon his hopes to hold a referendum on entering the euro zone this year, reliable sources report. President Chirac’s pitched battles with Washington have exposed French exporters to threats of retaliation in the U.S. market and distracted his government from badly needed tax reform.

It is all guns and little butter in this winter of anticipatory war. Only Putin and Jiang seem to be watching the shop.

Jim Hoagland is a columnist for Washington Post Writers Group.