[dragonwriter]

Nations continue to exist without border security -- and, indeed, without the nation having borders or a state to secure them.

[jazzyk]

I am not being smug, just genuinely curious - can you provide contemporary examples of a major nation without border security?

[dragonwriter]

Major nations, in the modern era of national and supra-national states, tend to either have their own state or dominate a supranational state, and so tend to have border security (which is necessary for an effective state, though less important to a nation.)

Of course, several centuries in to the era of the nation-state as a dominant form, lots of people confuse states and nations.