Brown Cover OP 43 - The Watson Institute for International Studies

associated with expenditure on defense. During the height of the
war in Nagorno-Karabakh, a serious humanitarian crisis within
the enclave did not produce any fundamental questioning of the
defense effort. The popular perception was that if the defense
failed, their community would be wiped out. In Armenia itself,
the opposition to President Ter-Petrosyan (e.g., the
Dashnaksutiun) was as committed to the cause of Karabakh as
he was. It is unlikely that it would have seized any opportunity
resulting from aid reduction to call for compromise. In short,
while “excessively generous” assistance may encourage intransigence
by warring parties, it is not obvious that lower levels of
assistance would produce movement toward political settlement.
Indeed, by increasing the general level of desperation in a
society, reduced aid might have the opposite effect. The reduction
of assistance may also drive young men to join military groups,
because food is more likely to be available there.
Concern over substitution effects is not limited to times of
active conflict. When humanitarian actors provision vulnerable
people after the conflict has ended, governments are relieved of
responsibility to normalize the situations of affected populations
and may delay assuming their broader social safety net responsibilities.
Again, the Caucasus provides eloquent examples. The willingness
of humanitarian agencies and donors to supply the
needs of vulnerable internally displaced populations in
Azerbaijan has greatly reduced pressure on the Azerbaijani
authorities to take responsibility for this group, which constitutes
about 15 percent of the country’s population. Public funds
freed up in this fashion may be used to rebuild Azerbaijan’s
armed forces in order to implement the frequently uttered threat
that if the political process does not produce an acceptable
settlement, the country will retake Nagorno-Karabakh.
Moreover, external support of these populations reduces
pressure on the government to consider compromises that might
allow internally displaced persons (IDPs) to return to their
homes. In these respects, the substitution effect may be operating
to favor the renewal of the conflict. Nonetheless, it remains an
open question whether, in the event of dramatic reduction in
post-conflict international assistance to the IDP population, the
government of Azerbaijan would address consequent resource
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