Something of a rant, subject: "nation".
A year or so ago I saw a US-citizen referring to "EU-nations", to which I objected to. Later I've seen similar usage in US media several times.
Now did a fast googling and noted that Cambridge (UK) and Webster (US) give completely opposite meanings for the word.
USA = Polity, and its subjects.
UK = Culture, which may have a polity, or representation in one.
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Short historical summary: present states in Europe were often formed by multinational empires fracturing into nation-states. Alternatively, a polity occupying the same area as a nation got turned into a nation-state with the advent of democracy.
Meanwhile USA as a settler-colony needed to deny these associations...
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..so we've a situation where the indigenous people are Indians and the colonists Americans¹; the "Indians" had "tribes" and the "Americans" had "a nation".
In essence what we have is a language which supports colonialism on an intuitive level. Of course America belongs to the Americans!
Further, calling the subjects and the citizens of USA..
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¹ I did some minor research and stopped to my satisfaction when I saw the phrase from 1970s: something akin to "Indians retired before Americans".
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..a nation meant that you could also deny demarcations within the polity. You could even take agency from minorities ("nation watched/demanded/etc") without having to concern yourself that "Indians" and women only got de jure citizenship in the 1920s, and POCs de facto (including "Indians", and also women) during 1960s.
This also in present day... "nation demands expulsion on woke and coloured"; "America is a white nation", and all that. Also indirectly: "American values".
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Juho Mäntysalo