It is shown that the nuclear Hamiltonian can be separated rigorously as
H=Hm​+HM​. For sufficiently smooth forces the monopole
part Hm​is entirely responsible for Hartree-Fock selfconsistency and
hence saturation properties. The multipole part HM​ contains the
``residual'' terms - pairing, quadrupole, etc. - that will be analyzed in a
companion paper. We include a review of the basic results often needed when
working with multipole decompositions and average monopole properties.Comment: 20 Pages, RevTeX 3.