That's terribly naive to think the channellers could be trusted to do as they please. Wishing for such an end to the WT as a institution is flushing the baby with the bath water.



That's anarchy, plain and simple. If enough channelers with bad intentions decide to join up, they'll have their way. There's only one force that can keep the channellers under control (beside the Seanchan way, that is - and it's about to be exposed as a sham), and it's the channelers themselves, either through a system of alliance between the groups, or far more easily by having a central institution responsible for holding all channellers to a code of ethics and rules, and having the means to enforce them.

This is actually the greatest accomplishement of the White Tower. The divergent groups have become Ajahs, and the Ajahs have been federated as the White Tower. It has managed to end the threat of male channellers for 3000 years, and to avoid all OP conflict between groups of channellers discoounting the Shadow's not involving the Shadow for 3000 years. That's huge. Just compare this to the history of Seanchan, pre-Paendrag. The WT has not managed to bring back world peace, because it approached the whole thing the wrong way and didn't work to eradicate the causes of war the way the previous Age's AS have done, but it's still managed to keep all channellers out of conflicts. The WO and Windfinders alike follow the same philosophy of non involvement in conflicts, and refusal to use the OP as a weapon, and the WT influence might well be for something in that (the WO have even avoided until recently to confirm to their own people they harbored channellers...). They would have no problem adhering to the second and third Oaths if asked- only the presence of the Seanchan could prevent them from it. By its power and influence, the WT has forced the other two big groups of channellers to remain hidden and uninvolved. Now they're in the open, and the male channellers have returned, and they're here to stay. The WT is more needed than ever, not less. It needs to evolve, and to change enough so it becomes acceptable to the far less rigid thinking of the WO and Windfinders, and to the Asha'man who have to build themselves up from scratch, pretty much forsaking everything started at the BT, which isn't an institution but an army, and an army that answers only to itself.

Neither the Windfinders nor the WO are organized nearly well enough to handle this. They have a lot to contribute to open the WT to new avenues of thinking, and to the mentality of a life dedicated not to power but to service to the people, but it's quite clear the WT as an institution is still fully relevant and needed. It remains the best starting point to create a new federative institution for all the channellers, and unless the other groups join it, become new Ajahs with radically different ways of thinking then the seven (one of which is now obsolete, and a second one will be after TG). The Westlands don't know the Windfinders, and all they know of the Aiel make them fear them, adn with the Asha'man its even worse. The WT may not be loved, but it is trusted for maintaining its channellers under control. It is trusted to keep all OP threats away from the people. The people wish, and expect the WT to keep the BT under control. The fear of male channellers won't vanish in a blink. Even the female channellers must still kept their fears at bay. At the Aes Sedai's side and without their arrogance and threatening uniforms, they don't inspire as much fear. The people when they learn what they are assume the AS have things under control (only the AS aren't so certain of that!).

The best way to avoid conflicts between channellers remains a central organization with enough power that none of the smaller groups would dare enter a conflict against it. The Asha'man don't really have a peacetime organization, and left on their own it will take them much time to build one. They know little of the traditions that lead to the forging of the WT after the Breaking. They would have to invent themselves, and would make many mistakes along the way. The WO and Windfinders serve their people, and only their people. Only the WT has the international vision, and the federative traditions. Rand would have to be utterly moronic to encourage its destruction rather than helping it to reform itself, to become something closer to the AOL AS organization. LTT's memories would most likely show to Rand he should help rather than hinder her efforts to to bring the various groups together, though he should, and very likely might, remind Egwene it would be time to invite back the male channellers into the organization they rightfully belong to, and that the Taint has kept them away from since the AOL. That's true for the Asha'man, and that's true for the Windfinders and WO as well. The WT is theirs. They were all Aes Sedai once, and they could all be again. The WT badly needs all these people and their way of thinking to change and evolve.

Egwene is a reformer at heart, but she started too early. She needed to understand the WT much better than she did before she started to change things, as a lot of her ideas were half-baked at best. Now she understands the WT, its purpose and value a lot more. Now she needs to begin to see what's wrong with it, and how to change what's wrong. She's already started since the reunification, but she'll have to open her horizons far beyond the WT now. She knows quite a bit of the WO, but not all, and she barely knows anything of the Kin, the Windfinders, the Asha'man. It's too late for her to apprentice herself to these groups, but in a perfect world she would spend time among each of them. Before she can form a true alliance, Egwene needs to start thinking not as a WT traditional AS, but as the leader of all channellers. She has to stand as much for the WO or Windfinders as she stands for the AS. She's getting there. Already, she tends to let the Hall speak for the "old Tower" in those reunions, while herself stand above the mêlée.