And at this point, the White Tower is the single greatest obstacle to this goal.

The Tinkers refuse to fight, eat the good guys' food and the SEANCHAN are foolish? I would only call them foolish in their continued sustenance of the Tinkers.

My central premise revolves around the fact that there is little indication of anything else.

Bah. What experience guiding circles? Everything in Egwene's WT PoV suggests the sisters have little to do with one another for the most part. What tasks to the Aes Sedai commonly undertake that are out of the reach of an ordinary sister's strength? The only advantage they have is their knowledge of the linking process, now disseminated to the other two major groups. There is nothing to a circle that requires "guiding" or "experience" to fight as a circle, all you need is one person with knowledge of the linking technique. Beyond that, a circle is simply the leader with some more strength. Adding Nynaeve to a circle led by Egwene does not make the circle capable of Healing unless Egwene allows Nynaeve to lead, in which case the circle now no longer has great ability with Earth weaves. There is no leadership or guiding involved. All you need is the ability to form a link and pass control, and the minds, wills and Talents of all the other members are now irrelevant. This means that Aes Sedai are an inherently bad choice to lead any circles, since you take combat trained channelers like the Asha'man or (edamane & former sul'dam; combat capable channelers with some experience channeling in life or death emergencies like the Windfinders; and combat capable channelers selected for courage and adaptability from a warrior culture; and you place all of these under the restrictions of a Three-Oath-bound channeler, who is used to an unassailable socially dominant position, great luxury, and vast ignorance of the realities of combat! And Aes Sedai are more likely than any group to insist on control of circles based solely on their presumption of superiority. The most likely reason of any of the other groups to insist on controlling a circle is institutional distrust of Aes Sedai, or disdain for the sisters' attitude.

The ONLY other factor in a linked circle that might require additional ability or technique is the need to combine saidar and saidin when leading a mixed circle. Except the greatest feat in the history of channeling was accomplished by a man in the first link in which he had ever participated. So much for the necessity of experience or superior training! Even if experience is better than going into it cold, what sisters have experience linking with men? For the most part, that answer is those bonded to Asha'man, one way or another, all of whom are part of Rand's entourage, either through the Black Tower or Cadsuane. Even the supposed experience of Cadsuane's crew from the Cleansing is irrelevant, as all of the women to lead circles in that business died in tGS.

What an absurd and gratuitous reference. Considering most of a contemporary history of the RC Church would be chock full of recriminations against every attempt by the Church to actually TRY "whupping" what they saw as evil, where do you get off comparing the White Tower's insistance on supremacy to the oldest and most charitable organization in the real world?
The knee-jerk antiCatholic bigotry of fantasy writers who try to make the Church collaborators with the fantasy evil injected into their alternate realities on the one hand, and accuse them of fearing change, and being xenophobic on the other is absurd enough (on what actual grounds, for instance, would anyone base the decisions of the writers of V or the Worldwar books to have the Catholic Church support and endorse non-human creatures? All of the common criticisms levied against the Church - anachronistic, anti-scientific, slow to change, conservative, bigoted, self-absorbed - suggest a position of reflexive opposition to the sudden presence of aliens and their unexplained technology and furtiveness. As writers of books with GOOD aliens & technology find all too plausible), without you levying basisless comparisons to a setting unconnected to the real world just for the purposes of getting in digs at the Church.

And some people who sit in their own house in blissful indifference accusing the servants of pilfering, until the flames reach their street. And other people who complain that the organic formation of the bucket brigade is too haphazard and try to reorganize it, or fume about allowing criminals to participate with no police officers detailed to keep an eye on them so they can be rounded up once the crisis is over. The White Tower consists entirely of too many of both sorts. As I noted in my original post, the ones who are likely to have pitched in and even donated their own buckets and wells and pumps are not the ones fussing around with the rebels or the loyalists. The entire struggle can best be compared to a debate over the placement of the deck chairs on the Titanic.