If Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice returns to Stanford in 2009, she will not be the only national figure back on the Farm. Retired Army Gen. John P. Abizaid, former commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), is returning to the Hoover Institution as its first Annenberg Distinguished Visiting Fellow.

Abizaid ultimately hopes to teach student seminars, possibly with former Secretary of Defense and Hoover Fellow William Perry ‘49, who is also an engineering professor. In the meantime, his research will focus on what he described as “national security structures and organizations for the 21st Century.”

National security, he said, is “creaky” and too Cold War-oriented, and needs to be more “agile and flexible” to combat the threat from non-state actors. Abizaid also championed greater integration between different agencies — including defense, intelligence, and diplomacy — in order to effectively fight terrorism.

He added that his firsthand experience in the Middle East will better enable him to study policy aimed at reforming the national security apparatus.

Abizaid succeeded Gen. Tommy Franks as commander of CENTCOM in 2003, overseeing the military in the Middle East, the Horn of Africa and Central Asia, with responsibility for 200,000 American troops.

He also served as a National Security Fellow at Hoover from 1992-1993, when he was a Lt. Col. Abizaid called his earlier experience at Stanford “eye-opening,” and decided at the end of his three-decades of military experience to return to the Bay Area, where he was born.

“I love it here,” he said.