Parsons returned to the field in 1947 as assistant to Myron Charles Taylor, the Personal Representative of the President of the United States to the Vatican, a post he held until 1948.[2] He then spent 1948-50 as Consul in the American Embassy in New Delhi and Kathmandu.[2] Returning to the U.S. in 1950, Parsons was posted at the National War College, and then in 1951 became Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of European Regional Affairs.[2] In 1953, he returned to Japan, serving as Minister and deputy chief of mission in Tokyo until 1956.[2]
In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower appointed Parsons as United States Ambassador to Laos, head of the U.S. embassy in Vientiane,[2] with Parsons presenting his credentials on October 12, 1956. As ambassador to the Kingdom of Laos in the midst of the Laotian Civil War, Parsons is identified with the Eisenhower administration's support of the Royal Lao Government against the Pathet Lao.[3] His mission to Laos ended February 8, 1958. Parsons continued to support the administration's Laotian policy in 1959-61, during which time he served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.[3] (He assumed office on July 1, 1959, and relinquished office March 30, 1961.) Testifying to the United States Congress in March 1961, Parsons said "the responsibility of the United States in Laos is indeed a very great one, and I hope there will be no misunderstanding of our firmness and steadiness."[3] In his 1965 book A Thousand Days, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. was highly critical of Ambassador Parsons' approach to Laos (Schlesinger favored American neutralism between the royalists and the rebels), saying that Parsons "drastically misconceived the situation".[3] Parsons never publicly responded to this or other similar criticisms.[3]
Parsons (third from right) with President Kennedy and other ambassadors in March 1961
On March 15, 1961, President John F. Kennedy named Parsons United States Ambassador to Sweden, heading up the embassy in the Diplomatstaden, Stockholm. Closely identified with American policy towards Southeast Asia, Parsons became the focus of criticism in Sweden as Swedish opposition to the United States' role in the Vietnam War mounted throughout the 1960s.[3] Parsons left his post as Ambassador to Sweden on April 17, 1967, and less than a year later, his successor, William Womack Heath, was recalled to protest the participation of Swedish education minister Olof Palme in an anti-Vietnam War protest. The U.S. would not appoint a new ambassador to Sweden until 1970.
