Let's see, a challenge!
Just kidding, I don't view the world that way. But I will highlight that, historically, it's been common to have various degrees of autonomy across nation states. Even today, Californians are consistently choosing less autonomy than other U.S. states.
But I digress. Another digression might involve suggesting undemocratic things are not implicitly bad, even if the rule of democracy is better. Putting down rebellions, for example. Or increasing police presence in high crime areas where criminals, or those scared of them, wouldn't vote for it.
But more to the core of the point, I'm not sure it's helpful to proliferate the perspective that variation in autonomy (or standard of living or what have you) is primarily a consequence of group identity without extraordinarily convincing reasons to believe so. Doing so opens the door to suggesting that that ought to be how it is, if the Other is, in your your view, trying to reduce your autonomy. An example where this might be justified is the literal concentration camps that the Chinese continue to impose on their religious and ethnic minorities.
The American culture is starting to see everything through group identity colored goggles, and that spells complete destruction for the country and our ability to reason about diplomacy.