Interesting and slightly chilling prospects. It has to be said that globalisation has had mixed benefits, and the political left have been aware of this at least since "No Logo". On the other hand, global trade has enabled many countries to lift much of their population out of poverty - while confining other parts to slave-labour production facilities.
It seems to me that there are inherent forces that will defeat any attempt to disintegrate on national lines. Firstly, there is the inherent freedom of information. China has allegedly managed to erect a Great Firewall, but I wonder how long it can hold up as communications continue to proliferate and peer-to-peer networks gain ground. For smaller nations it would seem almost impossible as radio communications from neighbouring countries and from satellites can saturate their territories.
The biggest skills in the IT job-market at the moment include AWS and Kubernetes, as firms increasingly give up their physical infrastructure in favour of doing their very computation in international centres.
Secondly, there is climate change. If that is not defeated in the context of international cooperation it will not be defeated at all. And even in the best case, the pressures of population movement are already becoming irresistible. The trickle of refugees from Syria and Libya is about to become a flood along the 200mm precipitation lines that span the whole world.
Thirdly, nation states are not necessarily a natural or a stable line of cleavage. Many countries have serious internal independence movements. The UK may soon splinter, and I have heard serious claims that Russia is likely to break apart in the next 10 to 20 years. The most successful societies these days are in very small states, and the trend to breaking up is real. An aggregate of small states is much more susceptible to pressures like economies of scale which favour cross-border integration at multiple levels, pressures which new manufacturing technology will probably not entirely overcome.
None of this is conclusive. It is sure to be an interesting few years.
