WASHINGTON—IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has seen his international standing rise as Europe's sovereign-debt crisis grows deeper.

As managing director, Mr. Strauss-Kahn has maneuvered the International Monetary Fund to the center of the European economic stage, provided tens of billions of dollars in loans to keep European countries afloat and earned a reputation as a problem solver in a time of economic woe. That has translated into a big lead in polls in France, where Mr. Strauss-Kahn, a former Socialist candidate in presidential primaries, has hinted at challenging Nicolas Sarkozy in the 2012 election.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who wasn't available to comment for this article, recently told Germany's Stern magazine, "I'm going to see my term as IMF managing director through to the end" of his term in 2012.

For decades, running the IMF has been a political liability. The managing director, by tradition a European, was widely viewed in Latin America and Asia as a foreign bully

But this crisis is different. The biggest problems occurred in Europe, so the European-led IMF wasn't viewed as foreign. And the 61-year-old Mr. Strauss-Kahn, who took office in 2007— before the financial meltdown—quizzed staffers about what the IMF had done wrong during past crises. Chief among the problems: requiring countries to make politically difficult changes that weren't crucial to fix their problems, such as forcing Indonesia to dissolve cartels and boost fuel prices.