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(nasm.info)Section 10.1.2

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10.1.2. My Jumps are Out of Range
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   Similarly, people complain that when they issue conditional jumps
(which are `SHORT' by default) that try to jump too far, NASM reports
`short jump out of range' instead of making the jumps longer.

   This, again, is partly a predictability issue, but in fact has a more
practical reason as well. NASM has no means of being told what type of
processor the code it is generating will be run on; so it cannot decide
for itself that it should generate `Jcc NEAR' type instructions, because
it doesn't know that it's working for a 386 or above. Alternatively, it
could replace the out-of-range short `JNE' instruction with a very
short `JE' instruction that jumps over a `JMP NEAR'; this is a sensible
solution for processors below a 386, but hardly efficient on processors
which have good branch prediction _and_ could have used `JNE NEAR'
instead. So, once again, it's up to the user, not the assembler, to
decide what instructions should be generated. See *Note Section
2.1.16::.