Dwight Eisenhower was president when the United States first devised plans for an embargo against the small island nation of Cuba, just 90 miles off the coast of Florida.

Nine presidents later, this country has begun to take baby steps toward correcting an economic policy toward Fidel Castro's government that has been ineffective at best and, by many accounts, a total failure.

In the beginning, as Cuban exiles flooded to U.S. shores and the revolutionary government took over the assets of American companies there, it perhaps made sense that trade embargos were appropriate tools to put pressure on a regime that had embraced communism and had begun to oppress the people it claimed to have liberated.

But as the years passed, and especially after the end of the Cold War, it became fairly obvious that the American boycott of this tiny country was a policy driven more by political allegiance to the anti-Castro Cuban-American community in Florida than a solid foreign policy decision that made sense for either nation.

President Barack Obama announced earlier this year that he would ease restrictions on air travel to Cuba and money transfers for people who have family there. The administration also wants to renew talks regarding legal immigration from the island.

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