The University of Exeter has approved plans to train senior Saudi military officers and government officials, adding another institutional link to Britain’s longstanding military relationship with the Saudi monarchy.
Under the proposed “formal partnership”, Exeter academics will deliver an MA in applied security and strategy at Saudi Arabia’s National Defense University in Riyadh. The deal could generate millions of pounds for the university and will involve about 20 officials a year over three years, beginning in 2026–27.
The National Defense University’s previous name makes the purpose of the institution clearer. Until two years ago, it was called the Saudi Armed Forces Command and Staff College.
Exeter’s own response places the proposed course firmly within the wider relationship between the British and Saudi states.
“We are in discussions to deliver this established Exeter programme to a cohort at the National Defense University in Riyadh. Professional military education has formed part of the UK’s defence relationship with Saudi Arabia for many years, including through UK government institutions,” a university spokesperson said.
This is the central issue. The course isn’t an ordinary international teaching agreement with a foreign university. It forms part of Britain’s deliberate, long-term support for the Saudi military apparatus.
Saudi Arabia is one of British imperialism’s most important partners in West Asia. The relationship extends beyond arms sales to training, military education and the transfer of strategic knowledge. The Saudi monarchy gains weapons, expertise and political support, while British arms companies gain a valuable market and the British state maintains a close alliance with an oil-rich regional power.
The monarchy’s human rights record has never been enough to threaten that relationship. British governments use the language of democracy and human rights aggressively against states they wish to isolate, sanction or overthrow. When an allied ruling class is useful to British capital and Western power, those supposed principles become flexible.
Saudi Arabia’s repressive political system isn’t some hidden defect which British institutions have only just discovered. It is a reactionary monarchy whose armed forces defend the rule of the royal family and the wider class order built around it. British governments have knowingly maintained military relations with that state for decades.
Exeter’s planned course would help educate the senior personnel responsible for directing that armed power. Its MA in applied security and strategy is aimed at working professionals in the armed forces, government and international organisations. According to the university’s marketing, it combines “academic depth with practical application” and “offers a rigorous yet flexible environment in which to build strategic expertise”.
“Practical application” has a particular meaning when the students are senior military officers and state officials. They aren’t simply studying war and state power as abstract academic subjects. The course is designed to improve their ability to exercise them.
The military isn’t a neutral public institution. It is one of the organised armed bodies through which a ruling class maintains its power, both internally and abroad. Training military commanders means helping to reproduce the personnel and knowledge required by that coercive apparatus.
Imperialism also operates through far more than invasions and occupations. It is maintained through alliances, arms contracts, financial relationships and the steady transfer of military expertise between friendly ruling classes. The Exeter programme is one small but revealing part of that machinery.
The secrecy surrounding the proposed deal is equally revealing. Exeter’s university council approved it in February and its senate endorsed it the following month, but it wasn’t widely publicised. Council minutes marked the partnership “Strictly confidential and commercial in confidence”.
Commercial confidentiality allows a political relationship to be presented as a private business matter. Staff, students and the public are denied scrutiny while university managers negotiate with a foreign military institution. Once approved, the arrangement can then be described in the bloodless language of educational impact and international partnership.
Exeter isn’t the only British university moving in this direction. Earlier this year, Cambridge University’s Judge business school considered proposals to provide “leadership development” and “innovation management” to the Saudi defence ministry. Senior academics described the plan as “horrifying” and a betrayal of the university’s commitments to freedom of expression.
The British government is actively encouraging closer integration between universities and the military. Last month, it announced a new defence universities alliance involving Exeter and 34 other founding institutions. Backed by £182m, the alliance is intended to “bring together academia and the armed forces”, strengthen defence research and build skills required by the military.
This broader programme shows that Exeter’s Saudi partnership isn’t an isolated lapse in academic ethics. British universities are being incorporated more deeply into the military infrastructure of the imperialist state. They’re expected to produce research, knowledge and trained personnel useful to Britain’s armed forces and its international allies.
A dispute over austerity at Exeter exposes a secondary contradiction within this process. While managers pursue millions from Saudi military education, the university is planning to cut 150 jobs, primarily in the humanities, arts and social sciences.
The Exeter branch of the University and College Union accused management of chasing “dirty money”.
“We are horrified but hardly surprised to learn that management at Exeter are more interested in flogging military training to despotic regimes than in defending world-class humanities and social sciences teaching,” a UCU spokesperson said.
Marketisation has left universities constantly searching for new commercial income. Academic workers and departments are treated as expenses, while wealthy governments and military institutions are treated as valuable customers. Knowledge becomes another commodity, directed towards whoever can afford to buy it.
Exeter says the Saudi partnership and the cuts shouldn’t be connected. “Partnerships of this kind are assessed on academic and ethical grounds, through a process separate from budget planning,” its spokesperson said.
The issue, however, isn’t whether money from the Saudi contract could be directly reassigned to individual humanities jobs. It is the political direction of the university. Managers are cutting workers and courses while devoting institutional resources to expanding military partnerships. One area is presented as an unaffordable burden; the other as an opportunity for growth and “impact”.
Strip away that corporate language and the arrangement is clear. Exeter plans to sell strategic expertise to the command layer of an allied monarchy’s state apparatus. The university gains a commercial income stream, Saudi Arabia gains British military education, and the relationship between the British and Saudi ruling classes acquires another institutional anchor. The job cuts merely sharpen the picture: knowledge useful to imperial power attracts investment, while workers and subjects that don’t serve its immediate priorities are left exposed.
