We study the IR behavior of noncommutative gauge theory in the matrix
formulation. We find that in this approach, the nature of the UV/IR mixing is
easily understood, which allows us to perform a reliable calculation of the
quantum effective action for the long wavelength modes of the noncommutative
gauge field. At one loop, we find that our description is weakly coupled only
in the supersymmetric theory. At two loops, we find non-trivial interaction
terms suggestive of dipole degrees of freedom. These dipoles exhibit a channel
duality reminiscent of string theory.Comment: LaTeX 11 pages, 4 figures; v.2 minor changes and some references
added; v.3 many more technical details added and significantly different
presentation, use REVTeX 4, to appear in PR
