Saruman for or against Sauron?

Originally Posted by Kuruharan

All of this is still just talking about what characters "knew."
And the Ring was certainly eager to betray everybody else, why couldn't it betray one of them?



Isn't that what he did, in a way?



I'm afraid you're not making a whole lot of sense here. At first you say that if Sauron thought the Ring was no threat to him then he would have spent more time hunting it but then you say he would have tried to use his armies to get the Ring back. Considering that he thought Gandalf or Aragorn had the Ring (which is a bizarre thing for him to think because if he thought they were going to try and master it, you'd think he'd believe he'd have sensed their efforts to do so) didn't he sort of use his armies to try and get the Ring back? Which is it you are arguing for?



A) It seems to me that you would have to master the Ring in order to defeat Sauron by this method. If you don’t the Ring will betray you to Sauron because the Ring would not have forgotten who it really belonged to.

Also…



It seems that mastering the Ring is part and parcel of utterly breaking Sauron.

B) This is another reason why the Wise didn’t consider trying this to be a viable alternative.



I have to admit that I’ve never particularly understood how the Ring was especially helpful in this regard. It can’t create soldiers out of thin air and how does it entice people to follow someone else to their death they know little about and have no history of loyalty toward.



Theoretically (ignoring the military incapacity of the West for this line of thought, even though I think this is a big part of the reason why the Ring had to be mastered in order for Sauon to be defeated in this way) it might be possible to militarily defeat Sauron. However, I agree that Sauron would not be broken and that he would come back. And I’m not sure the Ring would be exactly helpful in this enterprise. I think it would be apt for betrayal.

Gandalf, as the White Rider said that Sauron should have used all his guile to the hunting of the Ring instead of throwing his power at Gondor. So, clearly there is a better strategy to hunt for the Ring than just sending plundering orcs to Gondor. Sauron could have sent some of his best men to scout & spy out the lands, whilst the Nazgul could ride openly again to scour the lands. In this situation, it would have been very difficult to get the Ring to, say Gondor, in time. Sauron could, & perhaps should have used his armies in a smarter way.

[Kuruharan]

Gandalf, as the White Rider said that Sauron should have used all his guile to the hunting of the Ring instead of throwing his power at Gondor.

Okay, gotcha.

I wonder if Gandalf was using what he (that is Gandalf) knew about what was happening. He knew that they were sending the Ring to destruction. However, Sauron didn’t know this and really didn’t know what they were doing. So certainly it would have been better for Sauron to spend all his time searching for the Ring because that was where the threat was coming from, but Sauron didn’t know that (which was a good thing).