National Strategic Planning: Cultural Transformations and Big Challenges

In this article, the author examines the issues of strategic planning of national development in the socio-philosophical discourse of cultural transformations. The essence of the specifics of national strategic planning is the semantic distinction between strategy and tactics, strategic and tactical objectives, as well as the distinction between goals and means necessary to comprehend any rational action. The article raises issues such as forecasting social and political processes, futurological approaches to forecasting and making forecasts based on a civilizational approach. In particular, the author cites in a comparative way the works of American and Russian philosophers and political scientists, who gave forecasts of national development and laid the basis for strategic planning precisely cultural and civilizational foundations. The article concludes that strategic planning at the state level is impossible without the ability to predict and model the development of the entire world, all its regions and major interregional associations. This is especially true in the context of the active formation of a global world order, which can hardly be called order, but social, political, economic and demographic dynamics are not controlled by chaos either. There is an active transition from a unipolar world to a multipolar one. It is noted that the lack of a theoretical framework adequate to the tasks of explaining what is happening and predicting the future is more acute than ever, although the active actions of world players indicate their desire to interfere in the established order and manage the changes taking place. Another important conclusion that the author makes in this article is that the paradigm of sustainable development is being replaced by a new paradigm, in which the concept of a big challenge plays a key role. This concept was born within the framework of historical and cultural science, but its subsequent evolution shows the powerful convergent potential of this concept and the conceptual framework based on it. The paradigm of big challenges turns out to be necessary to explain and predict events in the field of politics and economics, nation-building and ensuring national security. This paradigm of great challenges is still in the stage of conceptual elaboration, as well as in identifying and describing its philosophical foundations.