Kathmandu. Several days after the 2020 US Presidential elections were announced, President Donald Trump still refuses to cede to President-Elect Joe Biden. Trump earlier this week relieved Mark Esper from the post of the US Secretary of Defense, and since then three more senior civilian officials have either been fired or have submitted their resignations in the Pentagon.

CNN Politics has reported that the Department of Defense has sounded the alarm bells owing to the President’s mercurial temper that lead to his erratic decisions. As per the news agency, Esper’s under secretaries, who had been showing resistance on a “premature withdrawal” from Afghanistan may be under White House’s scrutiny as well. In conversation with CNN, a senior defense official has noted, “it appears we are done with the beheadings for now.”

This has raised wariness amongst the top military and civilian officials that a rapid effort to withdraw troops from Afghanistan might follow. Trump had announced on Twitter last month that he was seeking to pull back US soldiers from Afghanistan by Christmas, which made way for concerns to emerge that it could potentially disrupt the negotiations process between the Taliban and the Afghan government.

“This is the last leverage the US had left in talks with the Taliban, and Trump is proposing to give it away for free,” stated, the Director of the ODI’s Centre for the Study of Armed Groups, Ashley Jackson.

While the decision is not unconstitutional, as the President reserves the right to replace political appointees, the unprecedented move to change the structure of the agency itself, after losing the elections has put many on edge. His selection of individuals – Republican partisans – for the vacated positions has served for further anxiety about the President possibly agreeing for a peaceful transition of power.

Brig. Gen. Anthony Tata, who called Barrack Obama a “terrorist leader,”, Kash Patel, who assisted the Republicans in “discrediting” the Russia’s role in the 2016 Elections, and  Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the aide to Trump’s previous security advisor, Michael Flynn, will all be assuming key roles in the Pentagon.

The Guardian has recorded the statement of Adam Smith, the chairman of the House armed services committee, whereby he has mentioned that “it is hard to overstate just how dangerous high-level turnover at the department of defense is during a period of presidential transition.”

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has declared his own list of individuals who will be taking up positions in the Department of Defense, and some names are reminiscent of the Obama era. Included are Kathleen Hicks, who served as the Deputy Under-secretary of Defense for strategy, plans, and forces in Obama’s government.

Moreover, the names of the Director of the RAND International Security and Defense Policy Center, Christine Wormuth, who also served in a number of capacities during Obama’s Presidency, and Sharon Burke, the Former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy, amongst others have been jotted down.

The US stands as a divided nation. If the President somehow is convinced for the peaceful transfer of power before January 2021, there may be some hope for the nation’s institutions not falling into a deeper crisis.