The overextended state is weak. Small yet strong states and large yet weak ones are to be expected. Eighteenth and nineteenth Century Britain was small but strong. Behemoth states such as Imperial China, Mogul India, Austria-Hungary, Hitlerite Germany perhaps, the USSR eventually, the European Union maybe, all collapse under their own weight, the burden of the administration that claims it is needed to control the underlying population. Too much of the aggregate production is inwardly directed for consumption, leaving little over for outward utilisation and investment in the creation of further wealth.
Thus, the paradox of the United States of America is resolved. This state, the greatest of all behemoths, exhibits the strength of a small state on a gargantuan scale, and it has achieved this miracle because its population has hitherto declined to be controlled, and so reserves more of its capacity for external direction and reinvestment, while at the same time permitting its population the freedom to generate still greater wealth on which the state can draw.
It is not certain that this remarkable balance and consequent achievement can be maintained in the face of rising internal popular pressure for redistribution.