Consistency of the effective-field-theory approach to the nucleon-nucleon interaction problem revisited

It is argued that Weinberg's approach to the nucleon-nucleon (NN) interaction problem within effective field theory provides a consistent power counting for renormalized diagrams. Within this scheme the NN potential is organized as an expansion in terms of small quantities like small external momenta and the pion mass (divided by the characteristic large scale of the effective theory). Physical observables to any given order in these small quantities are calculated from the solutions of the Lippmann-Schwinger (or Schr\" odinger) equation.