U.S. aid to the countries of Central Asia and the Caucasus would fall next year under the budget the White House proposed today. Aid to every country in the region would fall in fiscal year 2014, with the exception of Kyrgyzstan, a continuation (but deceleration) of the drop between fiscal years 2012 and 2013. Under the proposed budget, total aid to Central Asia would drop by four percent while aid to the Caucasus would drop 12 percent. That's on top of budget cuts announced in February, under which aid to the Caucasus would drop by 24 percent from 2012 to 2013. Aid to Central Asia would drop 12 percent over the same time period. However, U.S. aid is down across the world, so this drop in Central Asia and the Caucasus doesn't necessarily represent a decline in U.S. interest in the region.

The total requests for fiscal year 2014:

Armenia: $30,843,000, down 16 percent from the 2013 request of $36,608,000

Azerbaijan: $15,555,000, down 5 percent from the 2013 request of $16,330,000

Georgia: $60,775,000, down 12 percent from the 2013 request of $68,700,000

Kazakhstan: $10,799,000, down 28 percent from the 2013 request of $14,900,000

Kyrgyzstan: $50,569,000, up 8 percent from the 2013 request of $46,725,000

Tajikistan: $34,915,000, down 7 percent from the 2013 request of $37,405,000

Turkmenistan: $6,125,000, down 9 percent from the 2013 request of $6,735,000

Uzbekistan: $11,052,000, down 12 percent from the 2013 request of $12,595,000

The 2014 budget documents (pdf) released on Wednesday don't have quite as much detail as those for 2013 released in February, so it's not possible to do the same comparison of how military aid rose and fell in comparison to overall aid. Still, we can see that the single biggest item in the State Department's military aid budget to the region, Foreign Military Financing for Georgia (the money they can use to buy military equipment) would drop from $14.4 million in 2013 to $12 million in 2014. Azerbaijan's money for law enforcement and narcotics would drop from $2.8 million to $1.2 million. Most other accounts remain exactly the same from year to year, or see slight decreases. Recall, though, that military aid administered by the Defense Department, rather than the State Department, has in recent years made up a much bigger portion of security assistance to the region.