The Fellowship - doomed to fail

[Zigûr]

I'm not sure I trust Denethor's anger. Was he truly angry because the Ring had been sent to where it seemed almost certain that Sauron would recover it, or was he really just angry because this object of power which he seemed to secretly desire ("Not used, I say, unless at the uttermost end of need"), even if he did not consciously realise himself that he desired it, had been put beyond his reach? Gandalf outright says he does not trust him:

'Nonetheless I do not trust you,' said Gandalf. 'Had I done so, I could have sent this thing hither to your keeping and spared myself and others much anguish. And now hearing you speak I trust you less, no more than Boromir. Nay, stay your wrath! I do not trust myself in this, and I refused this thing, even as a freely given gift. You are strong and can still in some matters govern yourself, Denethor; yet if you had received this thing, it would have overthrown you. Were it buried beneath the roots of Mindolluin, still it would burn your mind away, as the darkness grows'

Gandalf seems to think, and I agree with him, that the best place for the Ring was far away from anyone who could wield it, and in my opinion it was the arrogance of Denethor - who seems to have falsely seen the struggle for the spiritual fate of Middle-earth almost purely in terms of a struggle for geopolitical dominance between himself and Sauron alone - which led him to anger about the Ring being beyond his grasp.