You can't make peace by talking only with your friends!

Some people had high expectations of last weekend's Ukraine summit at the Bürgenstock. Others were under no illusions and even spoke of a farce. After all, how can you talk about peace when the main actor in the war, the aggressor, is absent? Very recently, the former Swiss diplomat Jean-Daniel Ruch published his memoirs and reflections under the French title "Crimes et tremblements - D'une guerre froide à l'autre au service de la justice et de la paix". A few weeks later, a German version was published. Today, the book is also available in English with the title “Crimes, hate, tremors”.

Why is this important? Because Jean-Daniel Ruch is a man who believes in dialogue, who knows that to reach an agreement, all the parties involved must be present at the negotiating table.

Jean-Daniel Ruch knows that it is only through in-depth knowledge of each other that an objective approach can be taken to the issues raised, and thus the hope of a resolution. We need to listen to the demands and expectations of all the players involved. How can you solve a problem if you don't know the data? If we don't study what happened yesterday, we can't understand what's happening today, let alone predict what might happen tomorrow.

Jean-Daniel Ruch takes us on a journey into the recent past and tells us about the present that some people refuse to understand, stuck in immobile and biased narratives, while the world is changing day by day, with each new geopolitical event having consequences that are often unforeseeable. He takes us mainly to the Balkans and the Middle East. He reveals large parts of his diplomatic career, rich in encounters, both pleasant and unpleasant. With him, as the pages turn, we feel hope, disgust, sadness and joy. The subjects are always serious, but some of the anecdotes make us smile, and sometimes laugh out loud (the story of former Swiss President Couchepin in Lebanon is a real gem!).

Jean-Daniel Ruch is a man who is not afraid to say what he thinks, at the risk of making waves. That's probably why they wanted to keep him away from an important post in the Swiss Confederation's Department of Defence, where he could have taken some disturbing positions," he says, referring briefly to the unpleasant episode he experienced in autumn 2023. It's a real shame. In these times of war, a convinced pacifist could have helped us to see things more clearly.

His book is a lesson in tolerance.

Foreword by Micheline Calmy-Rey, former President of the Swiss Confederation.

"Reads like a thriller", says Carla Del Ponte, former prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Jean-Daniel Ruch
“Crimes, hate, tremors - From one Cold War to the other, in pursuit of Peace and Justice”

Kindle edition and paperback (176 pages)