Thread:Omega64/@comment-4503935-20190703001710/@comment-10330822-20200215162202

Well, continuing to think he could just bring back Sasuke like nothing happened was probably naive in the beginning, but Naruto gave up that thought after his talk with A and Gaara. Afterwords, he felt he needed to confront Sasuke on his own. So, for the most part, yeah, I feel he knew what he was doing. He knew the Raikage had the authority to potentially get Sasuke killed, so he tried reason with A to get some leniency and offer his help to try and retrieve B. However, after Sasuke attacked the summit, that entire conversation was rendered irrelevant for that point.

Really, I feel Naruto was predominately on the side in that arc, and the point wasn't so much what he was going to do, but rather how his perception of what Sasuke was to the world needed to change.