You are the dictator of an island nation 900,000 km² in size, 30,000,000 in population, and a random country in the list of top 10 militaries will attack your country in 10 years; what is your plan?

You have zero nukes.

Yes, but I have 10 years to acquire them.

Start a nuclear weapons program and hope I make some in time. This is simply just the best option period. I know its lame and uncreative but it is the greatest deterrant.

Develop or trade for nukes. Literally anything else leads to us being conquered or destroyed.

9 years to get nukes, 1 year to bankrupt the country and seek asylum in Russia.

Well. This is fortunate.

I happen to be the dictator of a moderately developed island sitting on top of the world's richest deposit of rare earth minerals.

First things first. I am a god. This is necessary to the development of Sippylandia. I will arrange for a few "dissidents" to attempt to assassinate me. As these attempts will miraculously fail, I will use this to push a media campaign to cement my divine status. Within the first year, I am not only the dictator for life but the figurehead of my own church. My word carries the weight of not only earthly retribution but eternal retribution.

I do not make requests of my people, I issue orders. This is necessary to the development of Sippylandia. My populace will be armed. Every man and woman of at least age 16 to the age of 40 is to train every day with rifles. The school curriculum is to revolve around both adoration of the figurehead, and logistics, teamwork, and the defense of the island. All citizens of Sippylandia are henceforth to refer to themselves and each other as Soldier.

The island will need some industry. This is necessary to the development of Sippylandia. All students will take a placement exam each year. Those with the aptitude will learn to become engineers. The strongest leaders will become officers. We will select for the best educators, the best scientists, the best doctors.

As the citizens will have very little say over their own prosperity, all services will be provided at the pleasure of the State. This is necessary for the development of Sippylandia. No man, woman, or child will ever want for a meal, a roof, or a doctor. As developing nations go, this is the long game, but we will at least begin to see the benefit after ten years.

Sippylandia will need to obtain diplomatic missions from superpowers. As we contain deep reserves of rare earth minerals, this will be easy. Sippylandia will promise access to these minerals. If the foreign powers bring in educators, build faculties and infrastructure, of course. The rare collection and relative ease of access to these minerals from within Sippylandia's DMZ will make the rather limited terms of access.

With only 10 years to establish industry, the first minerals being stopped at the shore by militant locals will likely be the cause of the first attack. This is necessary for the defense of Sippylandia. Even with ten years of training and an island population of soldiers, we will not be able to withstand the full onslaught of a superpower for long. But we will make every mile hurt. It is not necessary to repel the super power, only attract the attention of her enemies. It's unlikely that the attack occurs without our allies noticing. And a luxurious new contract awaits whomever comes to our defense first. This will be central to every contract for mineral access signed by every superpower. Any aggression will be repelled by all other signatories, and more lucrative access awaits.

Of course, we will be unable to mine these resources ourselves. What with the devastating attack. The populace will need to focus on repopulation, so foreign workers will be to make up the bulk of the manual labor. The God King SippyCup will not have his glorious citizens reduced to manual labor. This is necessary for the prosperity and security of Sippylandia.

Get nuclear weapons ASAP.

Cyberwarefare and a fuckton of drones.

Use the cyber division to infect the computers of your attacker's military and to collect enough data to backmail high ranking officials.

Drones are hard to stop when they attack in a swarm.

Underwater drones wouldn't be a bad idea either to attack any military that gets too close. Maybe a last ditch effort to take them down with you.

First move: immediately turn over the dictatorship to a council elected by trades unions and community groups to manage in the interest of all people on the island.

Second move, tell them about this impending threat and allow the new revolutionary council to deal with this issue. As a mechanical engineer I'm not beat suited to the role of dictator

1. Get nukes.
2. Make incredibly sweet business deals with every nation, making being attacked by one a threat to ally he others.
3. Hope 1 or 2 works or we're fucked.
4. I guess we're fucked.

Ooh, I get to choose the location?

Fairly close to the North Pole. Our people are adapted to it, assuming the island has always been there somehow. Nobody else is, making the logistics of trying to invade an absolute nightmare for anyone on Earth.

Now we just have to feed ourselves somehow in the event of a naval blockade, so a lot of investment into ballistic missiles and submarines to make a blockade as difficult as possible and hopefully keep our trade open during the summertime. I assume we're fully reliant on imports that can only come in during that seasonal window. Fishing alone probably can't sustain a population that large, and nothing is going to grow up there.

Assuming an invasion has to occur in 10 years and cannot be delayed, whoever tries is kinda fucked though.

If North Pole is cheating, then in the middle of the Pacific with the same plan. Probably can't resist something like the US though in that case.

The joke's on you, I've been training for this day since the very first Tropico game.

Maximise citizen happiness so they have something to fight for if we are attacked. Focus on good relationships with neighbours.

Buy nukes, pursue them by all means possible. There are many unaccounted-for nukes since Soviet Union collapse.

Nothing else will work. Compare, say, Libya or Ukraine or Iraq or etc. to North Korea, a small, weak nation in comparison to the USA

Build the biggest soft power possible to make allies (video games, movies, medicine, etc), send spies everywhere to identify potential attacker/warmongers, assassinate them.

If nothing works, make the island a fiscal paradise. Predators don't shit where they eat.

Aim for alliances with at least half the top militaries. If one is going to be gunning for us, I want their peers to have our back.

To that end, pick an island location with a strong command of shipping lanes, both to offer access to allies and to boost our economy. The invincible force field will help enforce this while we get set up. Offer temporarily invincible military bases to our allies - give them more reason to back us up, and hopefully jumpstart our military readiness.

Otherwise I'd go utopian like @Tonava said - entice the best and the brightest, and have them play to their strengths, aiming to have a robust, well-educated populace.

The easy answer? Choose somewhere with uranium deposits, and bootstrap a nuclear program. 10 years should be enough given the 100% literacy rate implying a pretty robust education base already.

Other than that, a pop of 30M over 900000km2 is pretty low density for a country so I'd pick an island with a large internal barren desert and huddle people up in 3 or 4 isolated shelters and then force the enemy through a long tough and brutal desert attrition war until they give up or we die. And that's after mining the ocean around the island and fortifying the coast.

That should make the effort of attacking vastly outweigh the benefits leading to a long term pyrrhic victory.

Assuming of course that I can't build a strong enough military in those 10 years. 30M pop with high literacy rate and a pretty good cohesive culture (speaking the same language) should make militarising pretty easy too and propel us into a top 10 army on its own.

you're telling me i have 10 years to somehow get my hands on a nuke and point it at washington?

Play Tropico for practice!

Am I popular?

Put me right next to Russia. Nobody else will want to invade because Literally WW3 You Guys and the Russians still thinks it's 1945 so at least we can prepare for that

Is this Civilization loaded with automatic peace treaties, soon to be followed by nukey Ghandi?

Fun fact, if anyone knows the game/meme but doesn't know what happened: Ghandi was set to have the lowest level of aggression possible, but a modifier was able to reduce it further. The negative value then got interpreted as the maximum value for aggression.

"you cannot harm the cylinder..."

You might have got your size a bit off maybe?

You're describing an island which would be the second largest island on earth after Greenland, and bigger than most of Europe but with a population similar to Canada's.

Your first problem would be population and target density.

Some countries, especially European ones would be almost impossible to conquer. Population density is simply too great and most European countries have dozens and dozens of large cities.

That means valuable military and strategic targets are not only spread across the entire country, but they can also be easily defended.

However in a scenario you are describing, most countries of that geographic size tend to have one or two extremely large cities in coastal areas, and the rest is generally barren and uninhabited. So you're looking at a situation similar to that of Australia, 30 million people concentrated in just 5 or 6 large cities with nothing in between. Very easy to invade, very easy to get a foothold.

Your first priority is to spread out your population and any potential targets. Gone are the mega cities, 20 to 30 cities all over the country with a population of over a million.

You are now able to spread out your strategic resources and ensure they are heavily defended.

You also need to invest heavily in air defence, and keep it mobile and hidden. Consider storing caches of handheld aa and at weaponry.

Invest heavily in your airforce, antiship warfare AND your navy, particularly submarines and small unmanned naval drones packed with explosives. You're an island nation. If your attacker can't get to your coastline they cant land troops.

If your attacker is America, you only need to sink a couple of carriers and they'll give up.

Your land based forces, must be mobile and able to act independently. Any military in the top 10 will concentrate on degrading military targets first. You need to be able to quickly disperse your forces and ensure they can resupply from dispersed supply depots - under cities will be best.

I'd make large bets with any rich entity that they can't kill me. When they can't, collect monies. Use that funding to influence all military powers to support and protect my island at the end of the 10 year protection. Use the rest of the cash to build renewable energy, sustainable food sources, universal healthcare and bunkers to protect the population. Would also offer assistance to citizens that want to flee before war.

I'd choose a location near the equator, both of focus on solar power, and for ideal rocket launches.

Propaganda campaign aimed at population of enemy countries. Promising anything. Putting the most innocent and attractive face on. Establishing close relationships

Sell my ass to China. Like, absolutely spread my cheek so the CCP can plow all the natural and human resources of my country in exchange for military hardware and training.

The thing is, the equipment and military is secondary. What I actually want is to tie myself diplomatically to the CCP. And hopefully the economic impact and good diplomatic relationship will push the Chinese government to intervene or at least indirectly support my country in case of war.

Worst case scenario I can be a PITA to invade. Best case scenario, Chinese trade sanctions, and military support force the invader to back off.

I'm choosing China over anyone else because of the potential impact of trade sanctions make them the best candidate. France or USA are also good options

I move to another country 👋