Who is X?

That's what the foreign policy world was asking itself 70 years ago this month.

The pseudonymous byline headed an article in Foreign Affairs magazine titled "The Sources of Soviet Conduct," which advocated "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies." It was perhaps the single most influential written work of the post-war era - and we could use an updated version for the 21st century.

President Harry Truman put the policy into action a year after the article was published by supporting Greece and Turkey against Soviet communism. The Berlin Airlift, Marshall Plan, NATO, CIA, Korean War, the space race and Vietnam War all trace their origins to this idea of containment.

You can draw a direct line from those 6,800 words to the entire Cold War. The secret author's actual identity probably had something to do with it - George F. Kennan, the second-ranking official at the U.S. embassy in Moscow.

Now we're a quarter-century past the end of the Cold War, and more than 15 years past the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, but the United States still lacks a singular agenda like the kind that Kennan once advocated.

The invasion of Iraq created a power vacuum that empowered Iran and opened the door to ISIS. The Pentagon is planning to send 4,000 more troops to Afghanistan with an indefinite financial commitment and no articulable goals.

A planned pivot to Asia and containment of a growing China was essentially dropped when the United States withdrew from the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty. Any attention towards Mexico, Central or South America seems to end at a wall along the Rio Grande.

The federal government spends more on the military than the next eight nations combined, but all that force lacks a true mission.

It is like we're navigating the ship of state without a map - and the guy behind the wheel would rather yell at the radio. Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, is spending his time as president fighting with cable news.

Meanwhile, there's a world outside the television set.

Russia has re-embraced its historic expansionism by pushing into Syria, Ukraine and the rest of Eastern Europe. China is working to grow its military sphere of influence into the South China Sea while using an economic infrastructure plan called the Belt and Road Initiative to extend soft power throughout Asia and Africa. Our European allies increasingly doubt the leadership capabilities of the United States.

Trump is supposed to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a G20 summit this week in Germany. What will they discuss? White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster said there's no "specific agenda."

Consider that a description of our foreign policy writ large.

All across the globe, Western democratic ideals like press protections, representative government and anti-corruption laws are on the retreat. And online, a new world of cyber conflict is being used to exploit public infrastructure and private businesses, and also spread chaos and propaganda in ways previously unimaginable.

Not only does the United States lack a cohesive strategy in this hyperconnected world - sometimes we don't even have the vocabulary to describe what's going on. Is a hack the same as a cyber attack? Is a cyber attack an act of war?

If you're looking for some modern-day George F. Kennan to help make sense of our increasingly unstable 21st century, consider yourself out of luck. Kennan's former home in government, the State Department, remains a hollow shell of itself. Of the department's 124 key positions requiring Senate approval, only 28 have a formal nomination or confirmation, according to the Washington Post.

There has to be some aspiring thinker at a U.S. embassy, some young patriot at a Ph.D program, who can articulate the path our nation should follow for the next 70 years. Where can we find our new X? That's the question the foreign policy world must start asking itself.