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Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024
The world stands on the precipice of a nuclear Armageddon, the byproduct of a confluence of the demise of the foundational principles of arms control that had served as a check on the world’s two largest nuclear-armed nations, the United States and Russia, and the geopolitical consequences of a failing hegemon clashing with an emerging multipolar reality. Nuclear weapons, once codified as weapons of deterrence intended never to be used, have morphed into weapons that have become integrated in the warfighting plans of the nuclear-armed powers. Deterrence is no longer in vogue—warfighting and war winning are.
There will be no winner in a nuclear conflict.
Critical thinking about the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, the necessity of arms control, and the consequences of nuclear war has never been more urgently needed. Highway to The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024 affords the reader a comprehensive insight into these critical issues as they were unfolding, free of the circumspection and narrative management of conventional histories.
Scott Ritter has been sounding the alarm about the dangerous path the world is headed down for some time now—his book Scorpion America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump, serves as a stark warning about the inherent dangers posed by nuclear weapons and the policies that sustain them.
Another book, Disarmament in the Time of Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union, brings to life the important potential of arms control agreements in bringing the threat posed by nuclear weapons to heel by detailing his own personal experiences from 1988-1990 as a weapons inspector in the successful implementation of the INF arms control treaty with the Soviet Union.
Highway to Hell offers some of Scott Ritter’s best writing and analysis on the danger of nuclear weapons and the need for arms control, culled from dozens of articles he wrote from 2015 to 2024 on the arms race, the death of arms control, the nuclear role of China, Iran, North Korea and Israel, and the U.S. nuclear posture shift from deterrence to employment. This is where we are on the cusp of a nuclear conflict with Russia.
Humanity is no longer protected from nuclear war by the series of arms control treaties between the US and Russia. This book awakens the reader to the existential danger nuclear weapons pose today, and seeks to motivate them to do something about it
There will be no winner in a nuclear conflict.
Critical thinking about the dangers posed by nuclear weapons, the necessity of arms control, and the consequences of nuclear war has never been more urgently needed. Highway to The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024 affords the reader a comprehensive insight into these critical issues as they were unfolding, free of the circumspection and narrative management of conventional histories.
Scott Ritter has been sounding the alarm about the dangerous path the world is headed down for some time now—his book Scorpion America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump, serves as a stark warning about the inherent dangers posed by nuclear weapons and the policies that sustain them.
Another book, Disarmament in the Time of Arms Control and the End of the Soviet Union, brings to life the important potential of arms control agreements in bringing the threat posed by nuclear weapons to heel by detailing his own personal experiences from 1988-1990 as a weapons inspector in the successful implementation of the INF arms control treaty with the Soviet Union.
Highway to Hell offers some of Scott Ritter’s best writing and analysis on the danger of nuclear weapons and the need for arms control, culled from dozens of articles he wrote from 2015 to 2024 on the arms race, the death of arms control, the nuclear role of China, Iran, North Korea and Israel, and the U.S. nuclear posture shift from deterrence to employment. This is where we are on the cusp of a nuclear conflict with Russia.
Humanity is no longer protected from nuclear war by the series of arms control treaties between the US and Russia. This book awakens the reader to the existential danger nuclear weapons pose today, and seeks to motivate them to do something about it
172 pages, Paperback
Published June 15, 2025
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January 16, 2026
A Wake-Up Call the World Can’t Ignore...
With the New START treaty set to expire in February 2026, Scott Ritter's Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024 reads less like looking back and more like a warning we should've heeded yesterday. Clarity Press released this collection in September 2024—a decade's worth of essays tracking how we sleepwalked toward the edge. And Ritter knows what he's talking about. The man's actually dismantled Soviet missiles under the INF Treaty, watched the intelligence failures on Iraq unfold from the inside as a UN weapons inspector. That experience gives weight to arguments that could easily slip into doomsday theatrics. Instead, what you get is careful, deliberate analysis of how nuclear deterrence stopped being about defense and became something far more dangerous—a hair trigger we keep testing.
The book builds itself from pieces Ritter wrote for The American Conservative, TruthDig, and Energy Intelligence, moving chronologically from 2015 forward. You can trace the unraveling: Bush pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Trump abandoning the INF, NATO quietly folding tactical nukes into its Ukraine planning. Then there are the wild cards making everything worse—North Korea testing missiles, Iran dancing around the nuclear question, Israel's arsenal that nobody talks about officially, China's military buildup that might spark an arms race no treaty could possibly contain. What haunts the whole thing is this shift in thinking: nuclear weapons aren't the absolute last card anymore. They've become part of regular military planning, emphasis on escalation rather than restraint. As Ritter puts it plainly, "There will be no victor in a nuclear conflict"—a truth that echoes through discussions of hypersonic missiles and the dangerous fantasy of "limited" nuclear war.
This isn't just recycled columns, though. Ritter draws on his earlier books—Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika and Scorpion King—bringing real diagnostic depth. Take Chapter 15 on North Korea: he's arguing for working with China to rein in Pyongyang and Pakistan, pointing out how sanctioning Beijing just burns money and trust for arsenals that don't make us safer. His writing style is journalistic, straightforward, built for clarity rather than impressing other academics. Regular readers get the full story without needing a PhD; specialists get footnotes referencing declassified documents and Ritter's own inspection work.
That said, the book has its rough edges. The essay format creates some repetition, and his thread about American "imperial overreach" might lose readers who'd otherwise listen. Ritter doesn't pull punches about neoconservative policy or the military-industrial complex, and while he's often right, engaging more seriously with opposing views would strengthen the argument. You can feel his frustration—the whistleblower nobody wanted to hear—running through everything. But honestly, given where U.S.-Russia relations stand now, that urgency might be exactly what we need.
What Ritter really does is shake us out of cruise control. Judge Andrew Napolitano warns the book will keep you up at night. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich invokes Dante's Inferno. Ritter's pushing his Project 38 initiative, trying to rally experts toward actual disarmament. With flashpoints brewing from Taiwan to the Black Sea, Highway to Hell matters—for policymakers, activists, anyone paying attention. It shows how the safety rails we built after the Cold War didn't just rust away. They were deliberately torn down, choice by choice. Turning things around won't happen through despair, but through the kind of collective will Ritter keeps insisting we still have. The book informs you, yes. But more than that, it tries to move you to do something about it. Highly recommended.
With the New START treaty set to expire in February 2026, Scott Ritter's Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2015-2024 reads less like looking back and more like a warning we should've heeded yesterday. Clarity Press released this collection in September 2024—a decade's worth of essays tracking how we sleepwalked toward the edge. And Ritter knows what he's talking about. The man's actually dismantled Soviet missiles under the INF Treaty, watched the intelligence failures on Iraq unfold from the inside as a UN weapons inspector. That experience gives weight to arguments that could easily slip into doomsday theatrics. Instead, what you get is careful, deliberate analysis of how nuclear deterrence stopped being about defense and became something far more dangerous—a hair trigger we keep testing.
The book builds itself from pieces Ritter wrote for The American Conservative, TruthDig, and Energy Intelligence, moving chronologically from 2015 forward. You can trace the unraveling: Bush pulling out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, Trump abandoning the INF, NATO quietly folding tactical nukes into its Ukraine planning. Then there are the wild cards making everything worse—North Korea testing missiles, Iran dancing around the nuclear question, Israel's arsenal that nobody talks about officially, China's military buildup that might spark an arms race no treaty could possibly contain. What haunts the whole thing is this shift in thinking: nuclear weapons aren't the absolute last card anymore. They've become part of regular military planning, emphasis on escalation rather than restraint. As Ritter puts it plainly, "There will be no victor in a nuclear conflict"—a truth that echoes through discussions of hypersonic missiles and the dangerous fantasy of "limited" nuclear war.
This isn't just recycled columns, though. Ritter draws on his earlier books—Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika and Scorpion King—bringing real diagnostic depth. Take Chapter 15 on North Korea: he's arguing for working with China to rein in Pyongyang and Pakistan, pointing out how sanctioning Beijing just burns money and trust for arsenals that don't make us safer. His writing style is journalistic, straightforward, built for clarity rather than impressing other academics. Regular readers get the full story without needing a PhD; specialists get footnotes referencing declassified documents and Ritter's own inspection work.
That said, the book has its rough edges. The essay format creates some repetition, and his thread about American "imperial overreach" might lose readers who'd otherwise listen. Ritter doesn't pull punches about neoconservative policy or the military-industrial complex, and while he's often right, engaging more seriously with opposing views would strengthen the argument. You can feel his frustration—the whistleblower nobody wanted to hear—running through everything. But honestly, given where U.S.-Russia relations stand now, that urgency might be exactly what we need.
What Ritter really does is shake us out of cruise control. Judge Andrew Napolitano warns the book will keep you up at night. Former Congressman Dennis Kucinich invokes Dante's Inferno. Ritter's pushing his Project 38 initiative, trying to rally experts toward actual disarmament. With flashpoints brewing from Taiwan to the Black Sea, Highway to Hell matters—for policymakers, activists, anyone paying attention. It shows how the safety rails we built after the Cold War didn't just rust away. They were deliberately torn down, choice by choice. Turning things around won't happen through despair, but through the kind of collective will Ritter keeps insisting we still have. The book informs you, yes. But more than that, it tries to move you to do something about it. Highly recommended.
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