Together again. Former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, after a detour through the Obama administration, announced Wednesday that he was joining former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, a former national security adviser, in their strategic consulting firm. The move reunites the Bush-era foreign policy team.

The firm, RiceHadley, will now be known as RiceHadleyGates and will continue to advise companies about doing business in emerging markets like the Middle East, China, Brazil, India and Turkey.

Mr. Gates joined Ms. Rice and Mr. Hadley in the Bush administration in December 2006 and was the first defense secretary held over by a new president of another party. He stepped down last year.

“Now that I have returned home to the Pacific Northwest permanently, I am looking forward to working with my longtime friends and colleagues Condi Rice and Steve Hadley once again,” Mr. Gates said in a statement from his home in Seattle. “I am especially pleased to join an enterprise principally based on the West Coast.”