Quote:
Originally Posted by Zigûr
I think this is a good point. We know Morgoth became diminished over thousands of years of spending his power on projects, as well as leeching himself into the earth. Sauron didn't need to go quite so far for the very reason that Morgoth had done it for him, but he still needed some way of taking full advantage of the Morgoth-element in nature as well as tethering himself and his greatest works to Middle-earth indefinitely. Otherwise, he would probably have spent his comparatively small amount of native power very quickly. He might have reached the point where, if defeated and probably executed by his enemies, he would have been incapable of embodying himself again.
So the Ring, or something like it, was probably necessary, and would have been quite clearly so to his intelligent if evil mind. Note that he started building Barad-dûr around 1000, but did not finish it until after he had forged the Ring around 1600. Presumably he knew he needed the Ring or something like it to complete these kinds of projects. It seems a little odd to imagine the foundations (which were the part bound to the Ring) being made after the rest of the structure, but there you go. Perhaps a scenario where he didn't make the Ring (at least by choice) isn't very likely.
As Corsair_Caruso has pointed out, a more likely scenario is a failure to collaborate with the Gwaith-i-Mírdain. This would probably have been the most realistic alternative to what actually happened, and the one with the best outcome. As Elrond states, "It would be better if the Three had never been." (Although he may specifically be referring to a scenario in which the One is regained by Sauron there; the phrasing is a little unclear in context).
It's been noted that Sauron was still defeated by the Last Alliance even while he had the Ring, which is a legitimate observation. I think on the other hand, however, the flaw with Sauron's plan was that he didn't have time to prepare properly for war with Gil-galad and Elendil. He had expected, I believe, that the Númenórean invasion of Valinor would simply force the Valar to wipe out the Númenóreans, not that Eru would intervene in a way which pushed the Faithful to Middle-earth and destroyed Sauron's body. That doesn't really relate to the rest of the issue, but I think it does remind that there were practical considerations to Sauron's policies as well. The Ring was not necessarily an "albatross" as Kuru put it but it certainly couldn't do everything on its own: it made Sauron's work easier, but not effortless.
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Two related points:
First, while you are probably right that some item like the Ring was necessary to provide that tie to the world that would allow Sauron to keep coming back as long as the Ring existed, in a way it embodied a form of pessimism for Sauron in that the Ring provided him a safety valve to come back in case he was defeated. However, it also provided an instant self-destruct tool (although, I can't recall, was that clearly understood at the time?) If I had been Sauron, I think I would have opted against the creation of the Ring and tried to avoid being defeated in the first place.
Second, to pose a silly question, could even the Ring have worked in this manner indefinitely? Say Sauron gets defeated repeatedly but the Ring still exists? Would the power provided by the existence of the Ring allow Sauron to keep coming back until he wins? In thinking about it, my belief is that it wouldn't have. Even in his origins, Sauron was not an infinite being and neither was the Ring an object of infinite power as it was created by a finite being. Given those limitations, I believe eventually one and or both of them could be depleted to the point of final impotence. Not that I think this is a particularly likely scenario, but I'm deliberately posing a hypothetical.