China, Russia, India, North Korea and the US finally agree on something: they all want to keep their nuclear weapons

For all the divisions among world powers, one concern unites China, Russia and the US, India and Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, France and Britain at the United Nations: keeping their nuclear weapons.

Those nuclear-armed states worked to head off a resolution calling for a global conference to establish a binding “legal process” to ban the manufacture, possession, stockpiling and use of the weapons.

The non-binding resolution nevertheless passed Thursday in a 123-38 vote with 16 abstentions. Opposing its call for a nuclear-free world is awkward for world leaders, and none more so than US President Barack Obama. He’s preparing to leave office seven years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in large part for what the award panel called his “vision of, and work for, a world without nuclear weapons.”

The US would refuse to participate in the negotiations over a nuclear ban if it passes, Robert Wood, the US special representative to the UN’s Geneva-based Conference on Disarmament, said on October 14.

“How can a state that relies on nuclear weapons for its security possibly join a negotiation meant to stigmatise and eliminate them,” Wood said in an address at the UN. Because nuclear weapons play a role in maintaining peace and stability in some parts of the world, a “ban treaty runs the risk of undermining regional security,” he said.

Echoing that view, Matthew Rowland, the UK’s representative to the disarmament conference, said that same day that his country’s nuclear deterrence must be maintained “for the foreseeable future” because of the “risk that states might use their nuclear capability to threaten us, try to constrain our decision-making in a crisis or sponsor nuclear terrorism.”

After international efforts to ban the use of biological and chemical weapons, land mines and cluster bombs, arms control advocates say it’s time to deal with nuclear bombs as the remaining weapons of mass destruction that aren’t prohibited. Sponsors of the resolution include Austria, Mexico, Nigeria and South Africa.