Why take over Middle Earth?

[The Squatter of Amon Rûdh]

You all are questioning the main point of history, why are wars fought.

That's easy. One leader or group of people wants one thing; another entity wants another thing; the two are mutually exclusive, so off we go to war. "The continuation of policy by other means", as von Clausewitz would have it, or one step up from tough negotiation.

Of course to most of the people who make war the object is to achieve a limited aim; usually to extort some kind of concession from the other side. Huge conquests built on trade wars, such as the British empire don't have a single guiding intelligence or goal behind them, but happen in a haphazard scramble that leaves everyone wondering what it was all about (actually it was about money, but that's by the by). Even Hitler wasn't all-out for world domination: he originally wanted Britain as an ally in some bizarre Anglo-Saxon/Aryan league (1), and I'm fairly sure that he didn't want North America. Stalin, his rival in the mad dictatorship stakes, paid lip-service to global Communism, but was really quite happy to carve out a fiefdom for himself in eastern Europe. Those two being the biggest empire-building lunatics of the twentieth century, one has to see Sauron as a very sick puppy indeed.

My pet theory is that people who really fight for power never wonder why they're doing it. I see the desire to rule others as a kind of insanity, be it wanting to be the chairman of the parish council, a national leader or ruler of the world. The more of a nutter you are, the more people you want to respect your authoritah. Like all the pipe-dreams of maniacs, though, it's all a waste of time:

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works ye mighty and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Although Sauron's immortal, so perhaps his ambition makes more sense.

(1) He joined Teddy Roosevelt in this odd ambition.

[EDIT] The text from Shelley's poem is now correct.