  We study the two-nucleon force at next-to-next-to-leading order in a chiral
effective field theory with explicit Delta degrees of freedom. Fixing the
appearing low-energy constants from a next-to-leading order calculation of
pion-nucleon threshold parameters, we find an improved convergence of most
peripheral nucleon-nucleon phases compared to the theory with pions and
nucleons only. In the delta-full theory, the next-to-leading order corrections
are dominant in most partial waves considered.
