The United Nations Security Council which is , tasked with the primary responsibility of maintaining international peace and security, holds a unique and powerful position within the international legal order. Given the recurrent violations of the fundamental principles of international law by states, examining the role and effectiveness of the Security Council’s actions as a centralized enforcement mechanism can elucidate the deficiencies of the current order. The principal research question of this study is: from the perspective of the Economic-Analysis-of-Law theory, to what extent can the actions of the United Nations Security Council serve as an effective enforcement mechanism for international law, and how can states’ behavior toward the decisions of this body be explained? Adopting a descriptive–analytical approach and drawing upon the theoretical framework of the Economic Analysis of Law, this study argues that decisions concerning compliance or non-compliance with Security Council resolutions, as well as the decisions made by Council members regarding the adoption or non-adoption of resolutions, are fundamentally the result of a rational cost–benefit assessment undertaken by states. Within this framework, criteria such as Pareto and Kaldor-Hicks efficiency, opportunity cost, and game theory are employed to explain the strategic behaviors and interactions of states regarding the Council’s decisions.