The path is well-worn: you start as president, accumulate power, become dictator. Then you stop. You sit there for decades, convinced you’ve made it, until another colonel does to you what you did to the last guy. The palace changes hands. The instability continues.

This is because you stopped one step short.

The real upgrade isn’t from president to dictator. It’s from dictator to monarch. Almost no one makes it, because they don’t understand what it requires.

You cannot declare yourself king. Dictator, yes. Supreme leader, why not. Those are titles you take. Monarchy is different. It is recognized. You need the club’s approval, and the club sends an invoice. Pay it. Once you are in, you are no longer a man holding power. You are the institution. Institutions don’t flee to Jeddah in their pajamas.

You also do not need to invent anything. The Gulf already built the system. Copy the blueprint.

First, understand a basic truth: police can break bones, but they cannot break meaning. So you don’t just buy weapons. You buy legitimacy. You put God on payroll, quietly, like any other respectable form of corruption.

You don’t become the religious leader yourself. That is amateur hour. You outsource sanctity to the most conservative clerical establishment you can find, ideally one that treats joy as suspicious. You protect them, fund them, hand them courts and schools. In return, they perform the oldest miracle in politics: they turn your family into scripture. Opposing you is no longer dissent. It is blasphemy.

And you have now hired an enforcement wing that goes places your police cannot. Your cops break ribs, but they still look like men doing violence for a paycheck. Clerics come with better words. They do not “repress,” they “purify.” They make you suffer here so you do not suffer there. A baton leaves bruises. A sermon makes the bruise feel deserved.

Once heaven is rented, you move to earth. You make yourself too expensive to overthrow.

If you’re small, you don’t “defend sovereignty.” You lease it. Host a massive foreign military base. Turn your territory into an asset. Now any rival, or any local hero with revolutionary ambitions, has to plan around foreign jets and diplomatic tantrums. Your country becomes an unsinkable aircraft carrier with a flag attached.

Then you fix the interior. Dynasties do not collapse from bad ideology. They collapse from letting strangers near the buttons.

In a republic, nepotism is scandal. In a monarchy, nepotism is the operating system. Stop hiring competent outsiders with “ideas.” Hire relatives with the correct qualifications: shared blood, shared secrets, shared panic when the walls shake.

Saturate the state until “government” becomes a family photo. Defense? A brother. Interior? A son. Intelligence? A nephew. Finance? Someone who knows what to forget. A coup becomes impossible because there is no independent state left to capture. You can’t stage a coup against a living room.

And once the state is the family, the economy follows. But here is where the amateurs fail.

You don’t tax the people; you buy them.

Your family owns the oil, the ports, and the land. You use it to employ the population in easy government jobs. You give them free electricity. You subsidize their bread. The deal is simple. Comfort in exchange for quiet.

The citizen stops demanding rights and becomes a customer demanding service. They might hate you privately, but they will not revolt because they are terrified of losing their salary. People revolt when they are hungry.

Because you’re not suicidal, never trust the national army. Regular armies overthrow presidents for sport. So you split the guns. Keep the conventional army far away; busy, exhausted, useful for border photos. Build a parallel force loyal only to you: tribal, palace-centered, well-paid. If the army gets ambitious, it runs into your firewall.

Finally, the club rule. The one nobody writes down.

Monarchies don’t dismantle other monarchies. The moment you invade a kingdom, you introduce a dangerous idea: that thrones are removable. The club cannot allow that thought to circulate.

Ask Saddam. When he invaded Kuwait, the whole ecosystem united to erase him. Lesson: if a fellow king is in trouble, you send money, troops, and a promise that contagion will be contained. Predators don’t eat other predators. They eat grazers.

Now, if you’ve made it this far. If you’re still reading, still nodding, still thinking “this is… actually smart”; then you’re probably ready for the premium package. The optional upgrade. The one YouTubers save for the last three minutes.

The thing that turns “protected by religion” into “made of religion.”

The family tree.

Find a connection to the Prophet. If you cannot find one, create one. With confidence. With paperwork. Entire traditions survive on documents written long after the fact, so what is a few more centuries for a lineage?

This seals it. It buys you the title: Amir al-Mu’minin, Commander of the Faithful. After that, politics becomes theology. Any revolution becomes heresy. Your opponents aren’t citizens with demands; they are sinners with audacity.

People don’t just fear you anymore.

They venerate you.

They kiss your hand because it isn’t just your hand.

It’s evidence.

(And yes, this is sarcasm. The fact that I have to say it is part of the satire.)