Okay, to start down a side road right off the bat...
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The destruction of the Ring, in its simplest form, brings the mythical times to a close via the defeat of Sauron.
Couldn't the Valar return to put their upstart cousin in his place? The implication is that they could or would not.
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Aside from this statement at the very end...
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Middle Earth would have been doomed to...physical destruction by the forces of the West
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I would speculate that perhaps the powers of the Valar were starting on their predicted wane.
However, I have a hard time believing that they would have allowed Sauron to dominate the earth, and they probably would have done something very drastic about it, hoping that some part of humanity would survive.
It could also be that it was necessary to have humanity destroy the Ring because of the Valar's repeated reluctance to utterly remove their opponents. It took them a long, LONG time to finally rid the world of Melkor. Who knows how much damage Sauron could have done if they had chained him in hopes of accomplishing his cure. He may have followed the path of his master and pretended regret and sued for pardon. Once he got it, well off he goes to wreck more havoc on the world.
It might also be a matter of giving up on one thing and trying something else. Direct confrontation of the enemy with equal "supernatural" power had not worked. So the Valar decided to try persuading Men to fight for themselves. The destruction of the Ring was the refusal on the part of humanity to use the greatest supernatural weapon they could obtain. This destruction ended the usefulness of the visible "supernatural" for humanity and the mythic age ended.
In a more overall view, I think that the destruction of the Ring was the act that showed that the Dominion of Men, a dominion planned in the very beginning by Iluvatar, had begun. It was part of the plan from the beginning for the mythic age to end and the "mundane" age of mankind to begin. The destruction of the Ring was something of a declaration of independence (if you'll allow me to use the expression) from former reliance on the "supernatural" Valar and Elves. The mark that mankind could defeat evil in its own way. A way that was more effective than anything that the "supernatural" had been able to accomplish.
There, I hope that makes sense.