Planning is a process of defining goals and identifying means and methods to achieve them, effective and relevant to future operating conditions, and therefore a diagnosis of a current situation, design and choice of goals, and ways to reach them. The main substance of this publication is to present research methods (methods of prediction) relating to the creation of the future of an organisation, especially a political organisation, or a country. They are: strategic planning and strategic review. In addition, the problems relating directly to the above methods such as limits to grand strategy, the Black Swan effect, the Tsunami effect, and the arguments against normative methods will be presented.

The article examines the development process of the national level security strategies in the United States. It explains the basic theory of the strategy-making, as well as the primary processes and relations among the major security enterprises. The author focuses on the 2017–2018 timeframe due to the significant changes in the U.S. legislative system and exceptional personalities involved in the strategy-making process. However, the article delivers a military perspective on strategy development. Still, it does not exclude general information on the U.S. political arena, legal framework, scope of the documents, or historical facts. These data facilitate a more comprehensive understanding of the complex political-military relations during the strategy-making process. The primary purpose of the article is to analyze coherent, layered strategic planning process during President Donald Trump administration (2017–2020) and draw significant conclusions, which other countries might implement in their planning system.

The growing geopolitical dynamics in the South Caucasus and the Caspian Black Sea basin region and the role of Azerbaijan as an undisputed regional leader in this space appear to be an urgent trend in international relations. Azerbaijan is not a member of either NATO or the CSTO, fighting for leadership in this region. But at the same time, Azerbaijan is successfully developing bilateral and multilateral relations with the participating states of these military-political alliances. Armenia, as a member of the CSTO, and Georgia, which has officially included the goal of joining NATO in the Basic Laws of their country, to a certain extent, can produce a degree of inter-bloc competition to solve their own problems. Azerbaijan can objectively reduce the risks of geopolitical tension in the region by promoting a peaceful cooperation agenda through inter-block communication. Under the leadership of the President of Azerbaijan, Supreme Commander-in-Chief Ilham Aliyev, Azerbaijan was the first in the post-Soviet space to resolve an interstate conflict within the framework of international law. Systemic and structural-functional methods are used in the geopolitical, geostrategic and geo-economic analysis of the role of Azerbaijan in the studied region, the development and implementation of the Grand Strategy of President Ilham Aliyev and the main directions of national geoengineering at the present stage of development of Azerbaijan. The comparative method is used to analyse the main trends in international relations based on the study of international, international legal, and foreign documents and materials.