Comment by nostrademons

The long-term risk usually isn't disintegrating into smaller nations, it's being conquered by a larger nation. And that's exactly why it matters if your country is dead - you could have the greatest constitution in the world, but if everybody lives under the totalitarian dictatorship next door, it's not doing you much good. Realistic governance needs to be a balance between quality of life for citizens and the continued survival of the state and independence from conquering powers. Arguably many Native American tribes were a lot happier before the white man came, but that doesn't do you much good when you get genocided.

Relatedly, I'm not sure if the GP's Scalia speech actually gets the causality right. I think we could make a good case that the United State's dominance and longevity comes from two oceans, fertile cropland, and advanced technology, and form of governance is a mostly-irrelevant sideshow. You could plop a different government down in North America, and as long as it had adequate incentives for individual innovation, it'd still end up a superpower.