Any tribalism gradation is abstract. If we agree that humans naturally go for some sort of tribalism, then we can discuss which sort of tribalism is most efficient. Tribe-as-extended-family tribalism is brutal. Pan-* tribalism (as USA) seems to start splitting into smaller tribes because it's hard to find common ground for people living in wide variety of historically caused socio-economic conditions (e.g. rust belt vs socal). Nation seems to be bring a good common narrative (historical experiences, usually language) and usually spans small enough territory to not have too much ongoing situation variation. Even the usual urban/countryside variation is usually not too much in close-by cities and their surrounding countryside because of population exchange both ways.
As for „national interests“ and „national security“, you get the same with tribalism.
It's not a linear scale of smaller/larger tribe. You can preserve smaller tribes within larger, and those within larger still.
What nation and nationalism brought to Europe is a series of wars that were as destructive as religious ones, at the time when religious fervor finally died down. And it is still doing more of that.
WW1 was brought by multinational empires. WW2 was brought by SSRS and Nazi (National-socialists). Yugoslavia was an attempt to build multi-national pan-slavic empire as well.
Historically imperialistic multi-national tribes try to build some sort of pseudo-national identity and erase small tribes. Be it SSRS with the new soviet man, Spain trying to incorporate Basques and Catalonians, UK and Scotland and so on.
If you look at 19th century and beginning of 20th century, nations/nationalism brought down the big empires. Austro-Hungary, British and Ottoman empires... Russian empire is still trying to survive but it will follow that way soon.
As for „national interests“ and „national security“, you get the same with tribalism.