Surabhi Ranganathan is a University Lecturer in International Law and Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

• Foreword James Crawford; Part I. Introduction: 1. Strategically created treaty conflicts; Part II. International Law Thought: 2. Writing the 'principle of political decision' into the law of treaties; 3. The idea of effective implementation of treaties; Part III. Treaty Conflicts in Practice: 4. Notions of ocean: the dispute over deep seabed mining; 5. Courting the United States? The International Criminal Court and Article 98 Agreements; 6. Fissions in the nuclear order: the India-US nuclear deal and the nuclear governance regime; Part IV. Conclusion: 7. The politics of international law; Appendices.

'The best doctrinal work I have read this year … a technically highly accomplished work of legal scholarship, showing great mastery not only of the law of treaties but also of international criminal law, the law of the sea and disarmament law. … Ranganathan demonstrates that the political space left open by the indeterminacy of the Vienna Convention's rules on treaty conflict can be used by states for strategic purposes, in order to change or adapt existing regimes. One of its more pleasant qualities is that it takes the critical revolution in international law seriously, while showing that it is possible to do highly insightful doctrinal work that is aware of international law being highly political and politicized.' Jan Klabbers, European Journal of International Law