On appointment as foreign minister in January 1897, Count N. V. Muraviev had been impressed with the strength of Russia's world position. He was pleased by French assurances that there could be no reconciliation between France and Germany until the return of Alsace-Lorraine and content to find both in Germany and France a distaste for Britain's “machinations”. Nevertheless, he did not want cooperation of the continental powers to be seen as a programme for the isolation of Britain. There was a danger that Germany would use Franco-Russian hostility towards Britain to its own advantage. However, the dramatic step forward by Russia in the Far East at the turn of 1897–98, with the occupation and then 25-year lease of Port Arthur and the Liaotung peninsula from China, decisively modified Russia's international position before and during the period of the Boer War. This overstretch of Russian expansion in the Far East urgently required the extension of the Manchurian railways, the building of naval and land defences for Port Arthur and the expansion of the inadequate Pacific fleet to face the Japanese. These placed huge demands over several years on the already overburdened state budget and required that Russia should stand aside from international complications.

Muraviev's proposal to the State Council (28 February 1898) for an agreement between the continental powers to limit military arms with the support of the ministers of war and finance already showed his awareness of the constraints on Russian policy for the time being.