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At this moment in time, It really seems sensible to assume that the western world balkanizes.

Why is there a Canada? Why is there a United States? And why would Montana allow itself to be dominated by LA and NYC? Why is there an EU? For that matter, why should East Germany which voted for the AfD want to stay with West Germany, which wants to jail the AfD?

Alberta is one step from leaving the federation right now, and I think you're right that it'll be one after another after that. The US might go "Hey, that's not a bad idea" after that -- let the far left states have the far left debts.

Canada in particular isn't even a country in the sense you might expect -- people might point to open borders and free trade in between interior borders, but while Canada does have open borders between provinces in term of movement between provinces, it does not have free trade or even many common standards between internal borders. An engineer in one province can't call themselves an engineer in another province for example, and many products sold on one side of a provincial border may not be allowed to be sold on the other side of the provincial border. In that sense, it is already moderately separated in ways that could be addressed with treaties.

One argument for keeping the unions intact is that the regions such as LA and NYC subsidize places like Montana -- and I'd argue that's an unsustainable model. Since 2000, the US federal debt has increased by 8 times, from a mere 4 trillion to a whopping 36 trillion, with no suggestion that things are going to change any time soon. In that sense, much like eventually the western Roman empire could no longer fund bread and circuses and fell apart, there's every reason to believe that these large states will face similar collapses as their means to pay to remain unified disappears in debt. Canada and the European Union are also facing debt crises in different way. Canada tripled its debt since 2007, despite being at a point where they literally could not sell Canadian bonds to anyone at one point relatively recently in Canadian history. The EU has already faced several sovereign debt crises such as Greece, Italy, and Spain that aren't likely over.

The UK, France, Italy, Germany, Spain -- there are big splits within these countries, they aren't a unified nation with a unified polis which will necessarily remain unified just because the modern period told them to.

Europe in the pre-modern period was dramatically fragmented. The Holy Roman Empire was in fact countless small entities, as was France pre-revolutionary war, and the Ottoman empire. There were kings, but the kings were much different than the central governments today. The world wasn't something we conceive of today. It consisted of relatively small local autonomous regions loosely affiliated with a certain crown.

Around the world, it's likely we'll see nations created in the modern age fall apart. India has only been unified a few times throughout its entire history -- the map has largely looked like TV static because of the constant rise and fall of small kingdoms. The idea of a unified India was imposed by England, and it's something that we're seeing cracks in as Muslim regions, Sikh regions, and Hindi regions, and more are stress points all across the subcontinent that have the capacity to balkanize if the global scenario changes. The Maurya and Mughal Empires did briefly unify large parts of the subcontinent, but those were exceptions to the norm, not the norm. India (even the parts that don't want to politically or religiously coexist) may consider itself part of a civilization and parts of Indian culture are some the most powerful cultural forces in world history, but that's a separate question from political unification -- The Germans, the Spanish, and the French may consider themselves Europeans, but if you created one country called Spadeuschrance they'd clash immediately.

The legacy of this is still contained for example in the German national anthem. The song was written in the early Modern period, calling for one "Deutschland uber alles" -- not a call for expansionism as it was considered in the Nazi Germany period (which is the reason the first verse was removed), but a call for all the separate things that were part of the Holy Roman Empire and later the Austro-Hungarian Empire could be unified under one nation-state called Deutschland -- Deutschland Uber Alles.

Nationalism isn't a truly conservative idea. It's a modernist idea inspired by the French revolution that was against the multi-ethnic empires of the pre-modern era such as the Ottoman empire, the Austro-Hungarian empire, or even the Roman empire in its eastern and western iterations.

Nationalism was "invented" by the Jacobins -- the original left wingers, and the group that essentially brought about the modern era through the French revolution.

It's easy to say "but conservatives took over nationalism!", but that's an example of "conservatives are leftists driving the speed limit" -- revolutionary ideas seep into unprincipled conservatism, so all the left needs to do is keep pushing. Eventually their revolution becomes the lay of the land for everyone and they move onto the next revolution.

European continental conservatism would be a return to religion, nobility, monarchy, Perhaps backing off of capitalism and a return to feudalism, at least for most of the modernist period. The only reason conservatism might call for a return to nationalism today is that just as conservatism in the modern period hoped to return to the premodern period, conservatism in the postmodern period hopes to return to the modern period -- but make no mistake, the modern period was a revolutionary period and conservatives didn't like what came out of it (including the Napoleonic wars, fascism, national socialism, and socialism).

In reality, a lot of the standardization of nationalization wiped out local traditions rather than sustaining them. The standardization of units of measure, while arguably and extremely positive thing nonetheless meant that local traditions of measurement were eliminated. Local dialects or local languages that weren't aligned with the central government were effectively limited by Fiat, and so in that way it was an institutionalized anti-conservatism.

English conservatism would look a little bit different, it would still likely be a return to feudalism, but the English have been a nation of traders for a long time, and the existed under some form of common law since before the modern age began. America by contrast came about in the very short period of time after the enlightenment but before the French revolution, and so it represents another way of being, and because it is such a young culture it's conservatism is similarly Young. No American conservative is calling for a restoration of the monarchy.

I'm not necessarily saying that things will return to pre-modern ways because they were better, but instead that versions of similar structures may form past the end of the postmodern period because the same forces that ended the Roman empire and resulted in a highly divided Europe may end up replaying as the global American-European empire collapses.

I'm not necessarily saying I'd like to see this happen -- the end of the modern era proper will not be sunshine and rainbows.