Italy was a superpower once, Britain too, as was Egypt, and Iraq. Great powers rise and fall, history shows us this, it's in how you accept this that governs the outcome of the nation. You can either keep holding on until the last minute and collapse in violence and chaos like Rome did, or slowly wind down like others did.
To be honest, I'd be a little less worried about one nation toppling and more worried about society as a whole collapsing, we are perhaps one great big superpower now, the whole planet is linked in a manner that, even fifty years ago (a gnats fingernail in the terms of the history of humanity) would only have been possible in the confines of one country. You can travel from New York to Paris in the same sort of convenience that you could from New York to *looks at US map* Philadelphia. You go back fifty or sixty years and such a trek would have involved a long trip by ship, go back another fifty years and it would have been an even longer trip. The concept of nationstates is fast becoming outdated, divisions are erupting not through race or nationality but through ideals, primarily because on this new world of the internet you can be any nationality or race, but generally you keep to one ideal. However the ticking bomb is resources, oil, water, food, our growing population and longer living society which places the accumulation of resources as a personal goal, well...unless we can pull some pretty nifty tech out of our backsides within the next century...heck probably even half that, well...we're looking at a nasty shock.
It's not governments that need to change...society needs to change.
Just my two cents and topic derailment...I'll call the breakdown gang...
