The nuclear force in the third millennium

I will review recent progress in our understanding of the nuclear force. In the course of the 1990’s, so-called high-precision, charge-dependent nucleon-nucleon potentials have been constructed which are, essentially, phenomenological models. These potentials are now commonly used as input for exact few-body calculations and microscopic nuclear many-body theory. I will critically analyses those models and point out their strenghts and weaknesses. Particular emphasis will be on charge dependence. Other recent research was conducted on a more basic level: understanding the nuclear force in terms of the fundamental theory of strong interactions, QCD. Predictions from this sector are typically qualitative in nature. Thus, the main problem of the current status in the field is that quantitative models for the nuclear force have a poor theoretical background, while theory based models yield poor results. The chief challenge for the new millenium is to overcome this discrepancy. Chiral effective field theory may be a suitable tool to solve the problem.