A recent poll by the U.S.-based Pew Research Center suggests that Germans are free-riding on the U.S. ability to defend its NATO allies. The poll comes at a critical juncture as NATO allies intensely debate how to respond to Russia’s hybrid warfare, employed so successfully in Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Ulrich Kühn explains for WarOnTheRocks that Germany traditionally follows a fundamentally different understanding of security which is much more based on dialogue and mediation than on pure power politics.