There was never any chance of winning. You can't fight a war against a concept, it just never works.

Was the war against communism won? Not really, communism mostly just collapsed on its own.

You can't fight a physical war against a concept. But you can fight an ideological war against a concept.

And in that regard I'd say the west did actually defeat communism to an extent. We definitely defeated the notion that a centrally planned government and economy is superior to an open government and economy. And we did it just by being more successful and shutting the soviet union out of that success.

The only successful nation still carrying the banner of Communism basically had to incorporate capitalism to remain a player on the international stage.

Your other two examples though, drugs and terror, those we tried to fight physically and that's why we lost.