Good faith observance of treaties is not always permanently exercised. ". . .(t)he circumstances in which a treaty was made may change, and its obligations may become so onerous as to thwart the development to which a state feels itself entitled; and when this happens, it is likely, human nature being what it is, that a state which feels itself strong enough will disregard them, whether it has a legal justification for doing so or not." Often treaties include provisions by which States can withdraw from their terms and conditions. All four existing multilateral space-related treaties, for example, permit parties to withdraw upon notice. Thus, the concept of "binding" when associated with treaties applies only in a temporary sense. Certain international agreements are considered nonbinding in the sense that there was never any intention by the parties to be bound by the terms and conditions of such agreements. An important example of this type of agreement is the current effort within the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) to draft "principles" for the conduct of operational direct broadcast satellite activities and satellite remote sensing activities. Presumably, there is also a good faith obligation to adhere to nonbinding "principles." Thus, the practical distinction between binding and nonbinding multilateral agreements may not be as great as might be supposed. The difference between binding and nonbinding agreements does not necessarily depend on their title. "International compacts which take the form of written contracts are sometimes termed not only agreements or treaties , but acts, conventions, declarations, protocols, and the like. But there is no essential difference between them, and their binding force upon^the contracting parties is the same, whatever be their name." This concept is embodied in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, which states in Article 2 that a "'treaty' means an international agreement concluded between States in a written form and governed by international law, whether embodied in a single instrument or in two or more related instruments and whatever its particular designation." (Emphasis added.) Only a State possesses treaty-making powers and thus, in most circumstances, international organizations become parties to treaties by virtue of the collective sovereignty of the member States. Recent international practice has adopted the
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