Foreign Secretary William Hague on Friday warned Scots that independence would leave them stuck outside the EU and losing influence on the world stage.
Hague said Scotland could be forced to join the euro currency and the European Union's Schengen open borders agreement.
He was speaking in Glasgow to launch the government's analysis paper on EU and international issues if Scotland votes to go it alone in the September 18 referendum.
"Scotland leaving the United Kingdom would diminish us all," Hague told an audience at The Lighthouse, Scotland's Centre for Design and Architecture.
"The advantages of Scotland remaining in the United Kingdom are indisputable in foreign policy as they are in every other area of our national life.
"A Scotland outside the UK would find itself less connected in an increasingly networked world, less able to advance its interests in an ever more competitive global economy and less able to influence decisions in a shifting international order."
The analysis paper said that as a new state, an independent Scotland would have to apply for membership of international organisations.
It said that would be straightforward in some cases but "would not" with the EU.
It cannot be assumed that an independent Scotland would have the same EU opt-outs and rebates as Britain does, it said.
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council president Herman Van Rompuy have both indicated that Scotland would have to reapply for EU membership, Hague warned.
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