No majority liberal polity need ever kowtow to the dictators of a few shitholes.
In what other domains has this worked? Certainly not for greenhouse gas emissions. Europe and the US both reduced their carbon intensity while China just built coal plants until solar became cheap enough to begin displacing them.
How about non-bellicose resolution of maritime disputes? The US was doing this in the 19th century. China is actively ramming boats.
Or perhaps we might consider human rights, workers' rights, or free trade.
We've tried unilaterally placating autocrats since before WWII. It didn't work when Hitler wanted the Sudetland, it didn't work when FDR tried to appeal explicity to the noblesss oblige of Stalin, it didn't work when Carter preemptively affirm non-interference in Iran's "internal matters" prior to the hostage taking, and if we want to take a long view it didn't work with the Persians in antiquity, the Mongols in the Middle Ages, or the Turks in the Early Modern period.
There are few strategies I can think of with a worse historical set of outcomes than appealing to the better natures of autocracies
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