National pride and patriotism is fundamentally a religion and a selective identity we give ourselves to make us feel better. If you think we're a great nation it's cos you want to feel good about yourself, and so that can be used to fool ourselves that things are fine as they are.
Maybe you get this idea that there is a 'hard done by' mentality cos others might not be so patriotic?
Paradoxically, national pride is irrelevant in this instance since it's more about ideas and having the savvy to implement them and better organise our arbitrary area. Other arbitrary areas do this regardless of size.