  An analysis of the baryon-baryon potential from the point of view of
large-N(c) QCD is performed. A comparison is made between the N(c)-scaling
behavior directly obtained from an analysis at the quark-gluon level to the
N(c)-scaling of the potential for a generic hadronic field theory in which it
arises via meson exchanges and for which the parameters of the theory are given
by their canonical large-N(c) scaling behavior. The purpose of this comparison
is to use large-N(c) consistency to test the widespread view that the
interaction between nuclei arises from QCD through the exchange of mesons.
Although at the one- and two-meson exchange level the scaling rules for the
potential derived from the hadronic theory matches the quark-gluon level
prediction, at the three- and higher-meson exchange level a generic hadronic
theory yields a potential which scales with N(c) faster than that of the
quark-gluon theory.
