Swiss diplomacy and Bürgenstock summit: no hope of peace without dialogue between enemies

About the book of Jean-Daniel Ruch, former ambassador to Serbia, Israel and Turkey, who believes in dialogue to avoid repeating the mistakes of the past.

SWITZERLAND, June 22, 2024 /EINPresswire.com/ -- 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 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". The book is also available in English with the title “Crimes, hate and 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. His opinion about conflicts is clear: "I was just about to finish writing when 7 October came along. All the world’s intelligence services, including the Israelis, who have a very good reputation, were stunned. Unfortunately, the scale of the carnage did not surprise me. I had written some time before: “When the Palestinians will be able to take revenge, it will be horrible.” And it was horrible. Just as the images of the civilian populations of Gaza devastated by Tsahal were horrifying. As a result, the war in Ukraine faded into the background. But there is one thing that these two conflicts have in common, and that’s the knee-jerk, hyper-emotional reaction in the Western world, including Switzerland. We rushed to take sides. To decide on historical ruptures without taking the time to reflect. Few dared to take a dispassionate look."

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. Listening to the demands and expectations of all the players involved is essential. 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. In September 2023, he was nominated as Secretary of State for Security Policies by the Swiss Confederation's Department of Defence, but not everybody was happy with that nomination. "On 7 October, Hamas unleashed its horrific carnage in Israeli communities bordering the Gaza Strip. On 12 October, a Zurich national councillor from the nationalist party published a vitriolic article against me in a German-language weekly. Among the names he called me were “selbsternannter Friedensmacher”, or “self-proclaimed peacemaker”, and a “useful idiot” who had supposedly helped legitimise Hamas", writes Ruch. It was his job to do so: "In the face of these attacks, I was calm: all I had done was fulfil to the best of my conscience the mandate that Micheline Calmy-Rey [Minister of Foreign Affairs at the time] had entrusted to me." Others attacks against Jean-Daniel Ruch led him to resign from the post the 23 October 2023.

He writes: "The virtues of dialogue that I have advocated all my life are being ridiculed. You must be partisan, otherwise you are a supporter of terrorism or a Putinversteher. Yet I was confident that, as the person responsible for security policy, I could have found a majority consensus. I had made all sorts of contacts, and a strategy was beginning to take shape. It was a question of showing our neighbours that we had significant added value at the centre of Europe, thanks to our armed neutrality and because of our technological and industrial know-how, for example. Others will have to carry out."

His book is a lesson in tolerance.

Marta Z. Czarska, editor
21 June 2024

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

Jean-Daniel Ruch
"Crimes, hate and tremors - From one Cold War to another, in pursuit of Peace and Justice"
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D6Z4QB16

Kindle edition and paperback (176 pages)

Marta Z. Czarska
Éditions Zarka
contact@editions-zarka.ch