Title: United States nationality law
Content:   United States nationality law details the conditions in which a person holds United States nationality. In the United States, nationality is typically obtained through provisions in the U.S. Constitution, various laws, and international agreements. Citizenship is a right, not a privilege. While the domestic documents often use citizenship and nationality interchangeably, nationality refers to the legal means in which a person obtains a national identity and formal membership in a nation and citizenship refers to the relationship held by nationals who are also citizens. Individuals born in any of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia or almost any inhabited territory are natural-born United States citizens. The sole exception is American Samoa, where individuals are typically non-citizen U.S. nationals at birth. Foreign nationals living in any state or qualified territory may naturalize after becoming permanent residents and meeting a residence requirement (normally five years).
Title: Nation state
Content:  of Bosnia and Herzegovina are drawn along ethnic lines, but those of the United States are not).  A nation state is a political unit where the state and nation are congruent. It is a more precise concept than "country", since a country does not need to have a predominant ethnic group. A nation, in the sense of a common ethnicity, may include a diaspora or refugees who live outside the nation state; some nations of this sense do not have a state where that ethnicity predominates. In a more general sense, a nation state is simply a large, politically sovereign country or administrative territory. A nation state may be contrasted with: This article mainly discusses the more specific definition of a nation-state as a typically sovereign country dominated by a particular ethnicity.
Title: Nation
Content:  people having a common origin, language, and tradition and usu. constituting a political entity. • When a nation is coincident with a state, the term nation-state is often used.... <P>...</P> 2. A community of people inhabiting a defined territory and organized under an independent government; a sovereign political state.... The word "nation" is sometimes used as synonym for: Thus the phrase "nations of the world" could be referring to the top-level governments (as in the name for the United Nations), various large geographical territories, or various large ethnic groups of the planet. Depending on the meaning of "nation" used, the term "nation state" could be used to distinguish larger states from small city states, or could be used to distinguish multinational states from those with a single ethnic group.
Title: United States nationality law
Content:  Nationality defines the legal relationship between a person and a state or nation, specifying who is a member or subject of a particular nation. The rights and obligations of citizenship are defined by this relationship, as well as the protections to which nationals are entitled. Though nationality and citizenship are distinct and the United States recognizes the distinction between those who are entitled or not entitled to rights, its statutes typically use the words "citizen" and "citizenship" instead of "national" and "nationality". The Constitution of the United States did not define either nationality or citizenship, but in Article 1, section 8, clause 4 gave Congress the authority to establish a naturalization law. Before the American Civil War and adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, there was no other language in the Constitution dealing with nationality.
Title: United States
Content:  is a federal republic and a representative democracy with three separate branches of government, including a bicameral legislature. It is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, NATO, and other international organizations. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Considered a melting pot of cultures and ethnicities, its population has been profoundly shaped by centuries of immigration. The U.S. ranks high in international measures of economic freedom, quality of life, education, and human rights; it has low levels of perceived corruption. However, the country has been criticized for inequality related to race, wealth, and income; use 
Title: Americans
Content:  Americans are the citizens and nationals of the United States of America. Although citizens and nationals make up the majority of Americans, many dual citizens, expatriates and permanent residents could also legally claim American nationality. The United States is home to people of many ethnic origins. As a result, American culture and law does not equate nationality with race or ethnicity, but with bona fide citizenship and an oath of permanent allegiance. <ref name="Citizen">
Title: Nation state
Content:  Similarly to the Kingdom of the Netherlands, The United Kingdom is an unusual example of a nation state due to its claimed "countries within a country" status. The United Kingdom, which is formed by the union of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, is a unitary state formed initially by the merger of two independent kingdoms, the Kingdom of England (which already included Wales) and the Kingdom of Scotland, but the Treaty of Union (1707) that set out the agreed terms has ensured the continuation of distinct features of each state, including separate legal systems and separate national churches. In 2003, the British Government described the United Kingdom as "countries within a country". While the Office for National Statistics and others describe the United Kingdom as a "nation state", others, including a then Prime Minister, describe it as a "multinational state",   
Title: American Nations
Content:  United States. As the country expanded, the populace that moved into the new territory brought with it the culture of the society from which they came, resulting in nations – a group that shares a common culture and origin – divorced from legal state and international boundaries. American Nations argues that the contrasts between regional cultures, as opposed to state borders, provide a more useful and accurate explanation of events and movements. Woodard has written two sequels: American Character: A History of the Epic Struggle Between Individual Liberty and the Common Good (Viking, 2016) and Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood. He has referred to them as an "informal American Nations trilogy."
Title: State (polity)
Content:  States can also be distinguished from the concept of a "nation", where "nation" refers to a cultural-political community of people. A nation-state refers to a situation where a single ethnicity is associated with a specific state.
Title: Country
Content:  <section begin=Definition/> A country is a distinct territorial body or political entity. It may be an independent sovereign state or part of a larger state, as a non-sovereign or formerly sovereign political division, a physical territory with a government, or a geographic region associated with sets of previously independent or differently associated peoples with distinct political characteristics. It is not inherently sovereign. <section end=Definition/> The largest country in the world by geographical area is Russia, while the most populous is China. The smallest and the least populous is the microstate Vatican City.

Question: is the united states a country or nation?
Answer: country.