While the withdrawal can be seen as an attempt to ease tensions between the United States and Russia, the United States remains largely opposed to Russia’s control over the separatist regions. The U.S. suspects that Russia’s motive for recognizing South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states is to possibly assimilate the two territories into its own. The United States also remains uneasy over control of an essential oil pipeline which runs through Georgia. This pipeline provides more than one million barrels of crude oil per day to Western Europe and North America, and allows the West to reduce its dependence on oil from the Middle East. The fate of the pipeline will greatly affect oil prices around the world, and Russian control poses a threat to the United States’s economic security.